BackUber ties up with NTR Trust to add 20,000 drivers in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana
Uber will share data from its platform with banks and financial institutions to help drivers procure loan
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Hyderabad: Taxi aggregator Uber Technologies Inc. has partnered with NTR Trust, a not-for-profit organization, to enroll 20,000 driver-partners onto its platform in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, seeking to steal a march over rivals in an increasingly competitive market.
This is the biggest such partnership for Uber in India, executives said.
NTR Trust will help enroll 20,000 driver-partners over the next three years, Siddharth Shanker, general manager for Uber Hyderabad, said in an interview.
NTR Trust, founded by the family of Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, will spread awareness of Uber, identify and screen potential candidates and train shortlisted drivers in soft skills and the English language. Uber, in turn, would help the drivers with vehicle financing.
“It is a great opportunity for both the NGO and Uber as both their mandates are being met," said Gayathri Vasudevan, chief executive of LabourNet services, a skill training company. But she cautioned that skilling alone does not guarantee steady income. “The drivers may not get sufficient business even after the training, and that may make it difficult for them to repay the loans," she said.
Uber will share data from its platform with banks and financial institutions to help drivers procure loans, Shanker said. Since many drivers hail from villages, with some of them not having bank accounts or credit histories, Uber will share data of similar profiles of drivers to provide confidence to the banks to lend to the drivers.
“The fact that we are moving to new cities, we need to work with a lot of stakeholders," Shanker said. “We will need all these things to come together eventually. It’s not one or the other. All of these are important."
Uber executives declined to part with state-specific numbers but said 250,000 drivers are listed on its platform in 26 cities in India, the second biggest market outside the US for the most highly valued start-up on the planet.
Uber’s partnership with NTR Trust comes on the back of Ola Cabs signing an agreement with the AP government in September to invest ₹ 150 crore to increase the number of drivers and vehicles on its platform by five times to 50,000 over the next three years. Ola Cabs, owned by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, is the country’s largest taxi hailing company and Uber’s biggest competitor.
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