When Praveen Narayan Dusane first started driving an auto-rickshaw in this crowded college town, he had to hustle for every rupee. He could wait hours at a rickshaw stand for passengers. He fought with other drivers and haggled with passengers over the fares. Typically, he earned just 300 rupees, or roughly US$5, during a 12-hour shift.
Now Dusane simply checks the text messages on his cellphone for his schedule, with pickups usually coming every hour or so. Business is so brisk that he recently bought an apartment for US$33,000 and can afford to send his three school-age daughters to an English-language school.
“Earlier, I had to sometimes wait all day for a ride, and even then it was up to your luck the kind of fare you got,” Dusane said. “Now it’s like you can see the money in front of you.”
Photo: Bloomberg
It is the advantage of the algorithm.
In a country clogged with congestion, a handful of startups are using technology to connect auto-rickshaw drivers with customers — an Indian twist to Uber and Lyft, the taxi-hailing apps.
Dusane’s employer, Autowale, uses a program to map out potential routes and maximize pickups. AutoRaja has a dial-an-auto service in Chennai. In Bangalore, mGaadi offers rickshaw bookings via its Web site and app.
The three-wheeled, often black and yellow auto-rickshaws are ubiquitous in India, where public buses are rather abysmal, subways are limited, and taxis are few and expensive. People can hail auto-rickshaws off the streets, but getting one depends on a combination of negotiating skill and luck. Most drivers tend to charge a flat, inflated rate, instead of going by the meter, and often turn down prospective customers if the distance is too short or to an area from which they might not get a fare back.
Autowale is trying to make the process easier by offering rickshaws on demand. Customers can request a rickshaw through the company’s app or Web site, as well as through the more old-fashioned method, its call center. Passengers pay a convenience fee of about US$0.33 per ride.
Although Uber came to India in September, the service is expensive and does not compete in the same space. As in the US, Uber, which operates in six Indian cities including New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, focuses on the taxi market.
Autowale does not have all the gadgetry of Uber or Lyft. It does not use GPS, and most drivers do not have smartphones, which can be expensive. Instead, the founders created an algorithm that predicts an auto-rickshaw’s potential route for the day and assigns pickups accordingly. They serve up the driver’s schedule via basic text messages.
The company promises drivers higher and more predictable income, along with fewer dead miles, those without a passenger on board. In return, the company receives a commission of 10 to 15 percent from the drivers. Autowale, which is not profitable yet, reported revenues of about US$335,000 last year.
The first version of Autowale — founded by Janardan Prasad and Mukesh Jha, friends since college — was a flop.
They initially developed a network of 400 auto-rickshaws across Pune, but they had too many rickshaws and not enough passengers for the unknown service.
“What had failed was a lack of commitment on both sides,” Prasad said. “It was kind of like dating. You have to commit to try to make it work.”
In summer 2011, they revamped their model and started out with five drivers, promising them a specific income, even if they did not get enough passengers. To commuters, they promised an auto-rickshaw if they booked one.
“We said to them, work with us for six months, and we’ll give you the rides and the fares and improve your income,” Prasad said.
Within three months they had 75 drivers in their system and were executing up to 100 trips a day.
Autowale now works with 850 drivers — including about 250 regulars — and ferries about 100,000 passengers a year. After a successful pilot in Bangalore, it is planning to introduce service there, and in three other Indian cities, as soon as it can raise the money for its expansion.
Autowale has faced its share of growing pains. As the customer base has increased, there have been quality concerns.
Satish Chandra, 77, who has been a regular customer since 2012, complains of rude drivers, late pickups and inadequate responses from the call center.
Prasad said the company had resolved some of the earlier problems and was also focused on driver training. At its office, which doubles as a training space, Autowale conducts regular workshops. For example, they had to teach some older drivers how to read text messages and how to get a number from a text to call a customer.
“All they knew were two buttons — green to connect and red to disconnect a call,” Prasad said.
One of the main areas of focus has been teaching drivers the concept of customer retention. For Autowale drivers, they instruct, the chances of encountering repeat customers are high. And if they do not behave properly, they dilute the brand and their own incomes.
“The key is to earn with respect and dignity and in a professional manner,” Prasad said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to