UberAuto is dead! And, it not even been a year since its launch.
UberAuto, the auto- Rickshaw hailing service was launched by Uber in April in city of Delhi. The service was launched by Uber in competition to Ola Auto who have been successfully running the service for more than year and half now.
However, 7 months into the UberAuto launch, it seems that Uber has not got the results they expected from this new service. A spokesperson for Uber told Quartz, “We are temporarily removing this product (uberAUTO) to solve specific problems that need to be resolved to help it scale,”
At the time of UberAuto launch, the company had said that they will be expanding this service across various cities – unfortunately, it never spread outside of Delhi and now it is completely shut down.
Why did the Uber Shut it down?
The dynamics of Auto aggregation and rental is quite different to that of a cab service. Most importantly, it has much lower ticket size. Secondly, unlike cabs, autos are not booked prior, they are directly hailed on the road as and when needed. Going to an app and then booking and auto might actually take more time then just reaching to them on the road.
In our view, the main reason might be that Uber may not have got the response they expected from UberAuto service. Smaller ticket sizes clubbed with lackluster response may have forced Uber to put a full stop.
The company shut down the platform about two weeks ago, and also did not provide any specific timeline for relaunching the service. While the Uber spokesperson has said that they are temporarily removing UberAuto from their app, we are pretty sure those green auto icons on Uber app may never be seen again.
It is interesting to note that their competitor Ola Auto has been running the same service successfully for a long time and it does look like they will put a stop on it anytime soon.
