Ticket to ride: Meet Prabhjeet Singh, president, Uber India & South Asia

From addressing cab aggregator irritants to Uber's next 10 years in India, Singh drives Nivedita Mookerji through the firm's journey

I choose to book a neighbourhood rental cab — a change from my usual Uber routine — to reach The Oberoi in Gurugram on time. I’m on my way to meet Prabhjeet Singh, president, Uber India and South Asia, for lunch at Threesixtyone Degrees to talk about the company’s 10-year journey in the country.

The guest has arrived before time and so have I. But unlike me, he’s chosen an Uber cab — “everyone’s private driver’’, as the company advertises. He says he travels by Uber all the time, and once in a while, also drives cabs on the platform to understand its users better. I ask him if the passengers are able to tell who he is. “No,” he replies, but there was this passenger who found him to be different from the typical cab driver and got chatting. The passenger Googled his name and figured out who he was.   

As we talk about user experience, I decide to share mine as a daily Uber customer — the convenience of hailing a cab on an app and the hassles that come with the facelessness of the service. Cancellation of trips by the drivers, if they want to go on another route or would rather be paid in cash instead of by card, is an irritant on any cab aggregator platform, including Uber, and I seek “expert opinion’’ on it. The IIT Kharagpur-IIM Ahmedabad alumnus responds patiently, explaining that Uber has addressed the issue of cancellations to a large extent by making the destination known to the driver beforehand. He also tells me that drivers’ preference for cash payment was a post-pandemic trend as they faced a completely dry season during Covid-19, and that issue was more or less resolved.

While I make a mental note to check this in my upcoming Uber rides, the company’s India head admits that there’s ample room to improve the quality of service. He talks about some recent initiatives, mainly to make safe travel the company’s top priority. Nearly a decade has passed since the alleged rape of a woman passenger by an Uber driver in 2014, and the incident remains a constant reminder for the San Francisco-headquartered company that safety must come before all else. I acknowledge the usefulness of the latest safety feature that asks a passenger if help is required whenever a vehicle is stationary longer than usual.             

We pause to order our drinks — fresh orange juice for “Prabh”, as his colleagues and friends call him, and a fresh lime soda for me. With that we are ready for our conversation, which will last almost two hours.       

I want to know more about his driver act on the roads of Delhi and Bengaluru, where his current home and office are. Even the global CEO Dara Khosrowshahi drives, mostly to deliver food on the Uber Eats platform in the US. I recall that in 2010, when Uber’s rival Ola was born, its co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal would often take the wheel. Not very different from what co-founders of another well-known start-up Flipkart would do in their early days. On getting their first order (for a rare book) in 2007, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (not related) had travelled across Bengaluru in the rain to find the book and ship it to Hyderabad. The start-up mantra of being on the ground and close to the customer, it seems, never loses its charm.   

Prabh, who’s yet to turn 40, declares his weakness for Asian food and how his family — wife Sucheta, his classmate from IIM who now works with a fintech company, and schoolgoing daughters Adya and Tara — is crazy about Asian cuisine. We order keeping this in mind. Dimsums of two kinds for starters (Asian green and chicken chive); risotto black truffle with parmesan cheese; and chicken krapow with white rice for the main course.

I ask Prabh about the regulatory challenges that Uber has had to face, not just in India but globally. The service is fully or partially banned in several European and Asian countries over alleged unfair competition or lack of safety measures. Goa is the latest in India where Uber is under attack, this time for operating without a “formal permission’’ as taxi unions continue to oppose the entry of cab aggregators into the state. On the issue of surge pricing — rates going up significantly in certain time bands due to peak traffic -- the company has been under the regulatory lens across some Indian states. His reply: You don’t achieve anything big without challenges. But he lists out his ask on the policy front: “There should be predictability and level playing field.’’    

The meal makes us smile. The dimsums are a joy. Just the right time to ask about competition. What’s the gap between Ola and Uber rider numbers? How are BluSmart and Rapido cutting into the Uber base? Does Uber consider itself a leader though Ola’s market share in volumes may be higher? Prabh is tight-lipped about the numbers, but says, “Uber has strong rider and driver favourability.’’

The risotto is light and creamy. In contrast, the chicken krapow, which is a Thai variant of chicken mince served with white rice, is fiery. We are thinking desserts already. Prabh opts for cheesecake and we also order a tart from the house of Valrhona — a French premium chocolate brand.            

Getting back to 10 years in India, I look for answers on Uber’s profitability trajectory. The India head points out that “the company is doubling and tripling down on the India business…. There’s been a significant progress.’’ Prabh says he’s bullish on India, in sync with Uber investors’ “incredible optimism about global profitability’’. Calling it an all-weather business, he points out that there have been no major layoffs at Uber despite large-scale job cuts in the industry.         

The dessert takes a while to arrive and we talk about burning calories, gyming, walks and runs as we dig into the delicious cheesecake garnished with berries — the top-up perhaps meant to counter the feeling of guilt after the overindulgence. The chocolate dessert doesn’t go unattended either. To my relief, Prabh is not a gym person and he likes to sleep late. It’s another matter that he wakes up early for kids to be sent to school. How does he catch up on sleep? “On the flight from Bengaluru to Delhi and back, at least every fortnight!’’    

Crystal ball gazing is not something that Prabhjeet Singh is comfortable with, but he doesn’t hesitate to list India as the topmost market for Uber in the coming decade. It is currently the third, after the US and Brazil. From 1 per cent of all rides at 500 million trips as of last year, the Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp-founded company is looking to tap 8 to 10 per cent of the total in the next 10 years. And from 800,000 active driver partners now, it’s aiming for 2 million. The 10-year celebration in India is round the corner and Khosrowshahi is expected to be here for it.     

We walk to the parking lot and I’m thinking about how more than 60 countries have adopted the cash payment mode that was incubated in India. More than half of the payments in India come in cash for an essentially digital service on the app. Prabh invites me to his Bengaluru office as he gets into the waiting Ertiga from Uber. The thought that stays on from our conversation is: Happy drivers make happy customers and that Uber believes drivers deserve better incentives.