Uber’s safety kit for riders, drivers
Uber, the world’s largest on-demand ride-sharing company which celebrates three years of existence in Sri Lanka, considers the safety of the riders and drivers its greatest responsibility and to ensure this safety, the company has introduced a three-pronged ‘safety toolkit’.
Prabhjeet Singh, Director, Business Operations, India and South Asia, Uber announced this at a media briefing held last week at Movenpick Hotel, Colombo. The kit comprises an insurance scheme which is first of its kind for riders and driver partners in Colombo, considered to be the 11th largest city in South Asia for trips.
In this toolkit riders can find safety tips built in partnership with law enforcement and learn about their insurance protections, and community guidelines which puts key safety information and features for riders all in one place which is helpful for riders. Riders can modify the settings to share all trips, night-time only trips or none at all.
The kit provides an emergency button for riders to have direct access to 119, the police control room, which will be placed under the shield button in the safety toolkit umbrella and will offer a quick swipe feature for riders. The insurance cover is underwritten by Allianz Lanka Insurance Ltd and will be offered at no cost to the driver partners.
Mr. Singh said that in Colombo they have enabled micro-entrepreneurial opportunities for more than 25,000 driver partners of which at least 35 are women partners. He said that in the weeks and months ahead they will continue to engage with their driver partners and riders to work towards using Uber, which remains the most attractive opportunity for driver partners and the preferred choice for their riders.
He pointed out that the safety toolkit is a one-stop-shop for technology-enabled safety features for riders using the Uber App. It enhances safety of riders in Sri Lanka and improves both awareness and usage rates of some existing and newly introduced features.
The moot point of their journey, Uber, a few months ago in August this year, launched their product ‘Uber Tuk’ which is now used by many people in South Asia as a point-to-point at affordable and attractive rates to go to any part of the country, at any time of the day, Mr. Singh elaborated.
He said that they felt that within the three year existence, it was a privilege to have more than 25,000 driver partners, and though it is a small number, in the months ahead they would be recruiting multiple numbers in the coming months.
He said that their approach is to create livelihoods to entrepreneurs on the one hand and at the same time creating a world-class mobility. With the product they have launched in August they were blown away with thousands of drivers joining them every week and thousands of people are utilizing their ‘tuk’ service with same technology powered experience now brought to the world of tuk.
He said: “In Sri Lanka the tuk service is one of the fastest growing products on the Uber platform. It is on its way to make this the tuk capital of the Uber universe. Sri Lanka and Colombo are on their way to become the tuk capital of the Uber universe”.
Describing the ‘unique’ insurance scheme, Surekha Alles, Managing Director, Allianz Insurance Lanka Ltd said that they as one of Sri Lanka’s largest general insurers, is pleased to partner with Uber to bring their best-in-class insurance experience to meet the evolving protection needs of their customers.