By George Aine
Global transportation network company Uber has announced plans to introduce more affordable, flexible vehicles in East African countries in a bid to stave off competition from emerging companies and restore public confidence in the company.
Uber is already established in the East African countries such as Kenya and Uganda. However, it has come under fire recently for being too expensive while some of its riders have been accused of cheating customers through manipulating the company’s automated billing system. This has since allowed Uber’s its competitors such as Taxify to penetrate the market and gain a huge market share.
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However, recently in Kenya, the company launched the small-size Suzuki Altos, which are fuel efficient compared to regular vehicles found on the Uber app.
Named ‘Chap Chaps, which means “faster” in Kiswahili, the vehicles have become popular among commuters in Nairobi and with these, the company hopes to expand into other East African countries, according to Reuters.
According to the Uber general manager for East Africa, Mr. Loic Amado, the Chap Chap service has been a success, which they tend to ride on to extend to the rest of East Africa.
Early this year, Kenyan users’ confidence in Uber’s automated billing system suffered a hit after it emerged that Uber drivers were using dummy apps to extend the distance traveled by riders in order to charge them exaggerated fees. It was revealed that the dummy apps interfere with the Uber Application’s location (GPS) readings to create a parallel travel path, prolong the journey and ultimately drive up the cost of the ride.
Mr. Amado told Reuters that the introduction of the boda-boda service in Uganda and rickshaws in Tanzania have already paid off and that they hope to extend such services to Rwanda and Burundi.
“You are able to get a much bigger piece of the population in touch with your technology and then it’s easy to afterward add the additional products like uberX or more premium (products),” Amado said.
The company said that it has 311,000 active monthly riders in the region with 9,000 active drivers. It operates in four cities in Kenya and neighboring Tanzania and Uganda.
To address rider’s safety concerns, Uber has introduced rider insurance for uberBoda in Kampala and Nairobi, Amado said.
It is now offering services like UberEats, which launched in May in Kenya’s capital and has 100 partner restaurants, Amado said.
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