Heena Sharma Blog

Uber on Monday launched Hourly Rentals , a 24x7 on-demand, intracity service, which allows riders to retain a car with its driver for several hours, and make multiple stops on their journey, due to which they get greater flexibility as they restart their lives after a lengthy lockdown. Hourly Rentals replaces Uber's earlier service called Uber Hire, and provides more flexibility to the rider in terms of choosing options for a ride. Through the new service, Uber is aiming to disrupt the unorganised cab rental service market. "Instead of offering 4-8 hour packages, a rider can now choose to travel as little as 10 km or one hour, up to 12 hours or 120 km, and pay for what he uses the service for," said Prabhjeet Singh, Head of Cities, IndiaSA at Uber. Read More

Uber lost $2.9 billion in the first quarter as its overseas investments were hammered by the coronavirus pandemic , but the company is looking to its growing food delivery business and aggressive cost-cutting to ease the pain. The ride-hailing giant said Thursday it is offloading Jump, its bike and scooter business, to Lime, a company in which it is investing $85 million. Jump had been losing about $60 million a quarter. Read More

Uber Technologies Inc's ride service bookings slowly recovered in recent weeks as the company expects a coronavirus -related slowdown will delay the goal of becoming profitable by a matter of quarters, not years, Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said on Thursday. He spoke after Uber reported it had seen encouraging signs in markets hit by the pandemic and posted a 14% rise in revenue for the first quarter, supported by a jump in food-delivery orders at its Uber Eats business. Read More

Uber is resuming services in the green and orange zones in India, subject to social distancing norms specified by the government, and will continue to run its Uber Essentials and UberMedic services in the Red Zones as well. For green zones, “If you are booking a car or an auto ride, to maintain social distancing, we recommend not more than two riders should travel at a time, besides the driver. No one should also be seated right next to the driver,” the Uber India Team said in a blog post on Monday. Similarly, Uber is resuming services in the orange zones outside of the containment areas. “ Please follow local government guidelines on the exact number of riders permitted to travel at a time in the car, besides the driver. No one should also be seated right next to the driver,” Uber said. Read More

Services of Ola and Uber will not be available in Delhi till March 31 amid the lockdown announced by the state government to contain the spread of coronavirus infection . The Delhi government on Sunday said the city will be in lockdown from March 23 to 31, under which no public transport, including private buses, taxis and autorickshaws will be allowed. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced a lockdown — sealing its borders, shutting down markets and directing private firms to give compulsory paid leave to all employees, including contractual — until the end of March. Beyond the 80 districts, states, including Maharashtra, which is leading in the number of coronavirus cases, Rajasthan and Punjab are now under effective statewide lockdowns after they imposed Section 144 that bars gatherings of more than four people. "Uber is complying with all Central and State Government directives related to its services for containing the spread of Coronavirus," an Uber spoke...

After Ola , now Uber plans to expand its operation in the country, from 52 cities at present to 200 by the end of 2020. The key driver of its expansion will not be car hailing but the bike taxi service , which was launched in India in July this year. Such service has been rolled out in 30 cities, doing over 150,000 trips a day. However, it is yet to be launched in the big states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, where Uber is working through regulations. This means, while car-hiring service will still be available in most of these cities, two-wheeler service will be there in all the cities if there is regulatory permission. Its arch-rival, Ola launched its bike taxi service in 2016. It has expanded its service to over 200 cities and towns across the country. However, the company is aiming to grow threefold to have 1 million bike-partners in the next one year. Read More

Uber Technologies Inc . faces a new legal attack on its refusal to treat drivers as employees that depicts the company as mistreating not just them but the public at large. A lawyer who’s been fighting the ride-hailing giant in court for six years wants a judge to now take into account the extra costs saddled on California taxpayers by Uber’s business model. Drivers being cheated out of wages and not being reimbursed for expenses causes California to lose out on payroll taxes, attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan said in an interview. Uber also avoids paying premiums for workers compensation, social security, unemployment and disability insurance, and public assistance for drivers who can’t support themselves, she said. The company has warned that attempts to convert its drivers from independent contractors to employees under California’s recently passed AB 5 law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, will be handled as they always have: by its armies of lawyers in courtroom combat. For g...

Your personal data may be up for sale on Dark Web for as low as Rs 3,500 that includes stolen social media accounts, banking details and credit card information from sites like Uber as well as gaming and porn websites, a new research has warned. According to cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab that investigated Dark Web markets to find out how much personal data is worth, cyber criminals can sell someone's complete digital life for less than $50 (nearly Rs 3,500). "This can include data from stolen social media accounts, banking details, remote access to servers or desktops, and even data from popular services like Uber, Netflix, and Spotify, as well as gaming websites, dating apps, and porn websites which might store credit card information." The Dark Web, also referred to as the Dark Net, is an encrypted portion of the internet that is not indexed by search engines. The Kaspersky researchers found that the price paid for a single hacked account is ...

Uber Technologies Inc. envisions taking to the skies with a fleet of food-delivery drones in as little as three years, an ambitious timeline for a ride-hailing company that would face numerous technical challenges and regulatory hurdles. The San Francisco company is seeking an operations executive who can help make delivery drones functional as soon as next year and commercially operational in multiple markets by 2021, according to a job posting that appeared on Uber’s website. App-reliant Uber has limited experience developing hardware beyond its nascent electric scooters and its equipment for self-driving vehicles, an as-yet unproven technology. The drone executive will “enable safe, legal, efficient and scalable flight operations,” according to the job listing, which refers to UberExpress, an internal name used for the drone delivery operation within its UberEats prepared-food delivery unit. After an inquiry from The Wall Street Journal, Uber removed the job list...

Uber first made its interest in self-driving cars public when it hired about 40 researchers and scientists from the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University in 2015 Companies News : After Dara Khosrowshahi took over as Uber’s chief executive last August, he considered shutting the company’s money-losing autonomous vehicle division. A visit to Pittsburgh this spring changed that. In town for a leadership summit, Mr. Khosrowshahi and other Uber executives were briefed on the state of the company’s self-driving vehicle research, which is based in Pittsburgh. The group was impressed by the progress its autonomous division had made in testing driverless cars in Pittsburgh and in Arizona, according to three people familiar with the ride-hailing company, who were not authorized to speak publicly. They left the meeting energized, convinced that Uber needed to forge ahead with self-driving cars, the people said. But days after the summit, one of Ube...

The ability to book an Uber through Maps allowed users to avoid the official Uber app Technology News : Google has reportedly killed the ability of direct   Uber ride booking from inside   Google Maps   without giving any reason. The feature allowing users to book   Uber   rides through Google Maps   was added in January last year, with which users could enter a location, identify their route, check   Uber   prices and request a ride without leaving the Maps app. On one   Google Maps   Help page, Google simply says "you can no longer book   Uber rides   directly in Google Maps", Android Police reported late on Monday. Uber integration was pulled from Google Maps on iOS earlier than on Android, according to the report. The ability to book an Uber through Maps allowed users to avoid the official Uber app, which has previously been criticised for its aggressive location tracking.