I've said it elsewhere too [0], and I say it again... There's no doubt that Uber is on a free ride in India.
If they can bully their way in the US, and not care about law and regulations there, then they have absolutely nothing to worry about in India. The law enforcement is weak, to say the least.
* Uber's customer service is a disgrace. I've tried contacting them 4 times for different issues ranging from bugs in their app to getting incorrectly charged for toll fees. Never got a response, despite countless followups.
* They do NOT really hire the drivers... they are in fact hiring "companies" that employs the drivers. Once I had someone else pick me up. The driver was using someone else's phone and cab that was registered to Uber. He told me the "Uber" driver was on a leave, and that he was deputizing on-behalf of him. And that he didn't really work for Uber, but for the "owner of the car" I could have cancelled the ride, but then Uber would have charged me 150 Rupees ($3) cancellation fee. And I didn't want to do anything with Uber's customer service, and I was kind of certain that I wouldn't get my money back.
* They're a faceless organization and that's unacceptable for something that involves physical contact with real strangers.
* They have their priorities mixed up. Instead of focusing on their "safety claims" (which they pitch as a distinguish-er) they are relentlessly focused on achieving the network affect that'd propel their business.
I'm firmly in the camp that believes that Uber used some of the funding $$$ in bribing the officials here to accelerate their growth (in terms of number of cities they operate in) in this country without any review.
The trajectory with Uber is very similar to how many a telecom providers made a killing during the telecom-boom in India. The government is set to have lost upto INR 300,000,000,000 [1] when a corrupt minister sold air-waves for cheaper prices.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8708545
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G_spectrum_scam
If they can bully their way in the US, and not care about law and regulations there, then they have absolutely nothing to worry about in India. The law enforcement is weak, to say the least.
* Uber's customer service is a disgrace. I've tried contacting them 4 times for different issues ranging from bugs in their app to getting incorrectly charged for toll fees. Never got a response, despite countless followups.
* They do NOT really hire the drivers... they are in fact hiring "companies" that employs the drivers. Once I had someone else pick me up. The driver was using someone else's phone and cab that was registered to Uber. He told me the "Uber" driver was on a leave, and that he was deputizing on-behalf of him. And that he didn't really work for Uber, but for the "owner of the car" I could have cancelled the ride, but then Uber would have charged me 150 Rupees ($3) cancellation fee. And I didn't want to do anything with Uber's customer service, and I was kind of certain that I wouldn't get my money back.
* They're a faceless organization and that's unacceptable for something that involves physical contact with real strangers.
* They have their priorities mixed up. Instead of focusing on their "safety claims" (which they pitch as a distinguish-er) they are relentlessly focused on achieving the network affect that'd propel their business.
I'm firmly in the camp that believes that Uber used some of the funding $$$ in bribing the officials here to accelerate their growth (in terms of number of cities they operate in) in this country without any review.
The trajectory with Uber is very similar to how many a telecom providers made a killing during the telecom-boom in India. The government is set to have lost upto INR 300,000,000,000 [1] when a corrupt minister sold air-waves for cheaper prices.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8708545 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2G_spectrum_scam