Uber in Nairobi in January 2015, and the service has is now quite popular among users. Uber has so far completed over 1 Million rides in Nairobi and launched in other cities in Kenya among them Thika and Mombasa. To tap into the growing demand for its services locally, Uber has innovated to meet the market needs. For instance, Nairobi was the second city in the world where Uber allowed cash and mobile money payments aftet Hyderband in India.
Early this year, Safaricom launched Little Cabs, a taxi hailing service in collaboration with Craft Silicon. Little Cabs , was meant to cut the dominance of Uber in the Kenyan market by offering itself as the cheaper market. Uber responded to this by slashing prices of its rides by 35%, a move that proved unpopular among its driver partners. Little Cab has also been quite innovative in its offering such as allowing users to schedule raids besides having the ability to hail via USSD.
In a move aimed at countering the ride schedule service, Uber has now introduced it on its own platform. The roll-out of service is however taking place on a global scale. With the new scheduling feature, users will have the ability to schedule rides 15 minutes to 30 days in advance.
How the service works:
Users wull launch their Uber App and then select the “Schedule a Ride” option within the App. They will then key in the pickup date, time, location and destination for their ride from within this option. Upon completion, the user will confirm detaols of their upconing trip and tap in the schedule ride button. Users will then receive reminders 24 hours and 30 minutes in advance oif their pickuo times. Users will also have tha ability to cancel the ride if need arises.
