Ola, Uber – have overstepped on demand and Supply of Cabs

Hyderabad: All major cities have witnessed a surge in quality taxi rides due to aggregators like Ola Uber Cabs. Now people are opting for these taxis because they give doorstep service, one can call the taxi withoug stepping out of the house or office. Its been a wonderful experience for the customer and taxi driver all this along, now things are changing the customer front there is no issue but cab drivers are facing many problems due to supply overstepping demand. This has happened as Ola and Uber aggregators did not bother about this factor as they were competing with each other getting more taxis on their platform. As a result each of these aggregators have more taxis than the demand requires. Moreover they have company owned / leased taxis which get priority to indivisual operated taxi drivers. As the leased taxi gets priority over others as reported by few taxi drivers who have observed leased taxis of these aggregators getting a new assignment as soon as they have just dropped the commuter and meanwhile individually operated aggregators have to wait for hours together to get the next ride.

Many have switched professions from being a farmer, security guards and from working for a MNC company or IT profession to as Taxi Drivers for these aggregator platforms as was a less stressful job and sufficiently paying. During the upsurge of the taxi business in 2015, there were incentives  for taxi drivers 1:2 means a taxi driver doing business of 1500 would get Rs. 3000 as incentive which has come down to 1:1 and now it is just 1, literally means for Rs. 1500 business the taxi driver could get Rs. 750 which is further deducted by 20% margin of cab aggregators. So the drivers have to manage their homes, the fines, the renewals of insurance, the fitness renewals and major repay the auto loan. Which is proving to be difficult to the taxi drivers and few have committed suicide and literally living hopeless lives. The government is not responding positively to predicament of the taxi drivers and has only ears to OLA and UBER aggregators.

Hyderabad taxi drivers are mulling a strike again after december 2015 strike from tomorrow that is 11 feb 2015 for five days demanding. Now the solutions seems to be either the aggregators stopping more registrations on their agreegator platform or individual cab operators surrendering their vehicles ot finance companies and switching profession, in both these scenarios the telangana government has to play instrumental role to get both the parties on one table and resolve it in a amicable manner.

ola uber driver protesing aggregators by begging on the street

Cabbies begin protest against taxi aggregators

The Telangana Cab Drivers and Owners Association (TCDOA) resumed their agitation against the taxi aggregators on Friday. As many as 35 protestors were taken into preventive custody and released later.

The cab drivers took to Jubilee Hills check-post and and begged for money from public. They managed to gather Rs 450 within fifteen minutes before they were taken into custody. The protesters now plan to cook food next to Kukatpally forum mall as a part of their protest on Saturday.

“We will beg and with the money that we earn, we will cook food. We want the public to know that working for taxi aggregators have reduced us to the state of beggars,” said Shiva Vulkundakar, state president, TCDOA.

The fresh protest came after the one week long protest called by the union from December 30 to February 5 failed to heed any response from taxi aggregators and state government. The protesters have been demanding the taxi aggregators to get rid of their star rating system, to bring changes in the driver rules during peak hours apart from demanding suspended drivers to be reinstated.