Uber's autorickshaw service back in India 2 years after it was shut down

Cab-hailing major Uber is re-launching its 'AUTO' service in India, almost two years after shutting down the offering in March 2016, starting with Bengaluru and Pune.

The US-based company, which is locked in an intense battle with homegrown player Ola, will allow customers to book autorickshaw rides through 'AUTO' option on its platform later this month in these two cities.

Ola, which also allows booking autorickshaw rides under 'Auto' service, had launched the offering in Bengaluru and Chennai in 2014. Ola Auto is currently operational across 73 cities with over 120,000 lakh autos associated with the company.

An Uber spokesperson said the company had "paused" the service "to see how that side of India's transport ecosystem evolves".

"Auto rickshaws are ubiquitous to mobility options in many Indian cities. To expand transportation choices for our riders, we are excited to launch AUTO in Bengaluru and Pune," the spokesperson told PTI.

In its previous attempt, Uber's AUTO offering was available in New Delhi, Coimbatore, Indore and Bhubaneshwar.

"We are re-launching AUTO starting with two cities. Gradual geographical expansion like this is common to how we operate in cities around the world and it is something that we are looking at very closely," the spokesperson said.
READ MORE

Gujarat, MP have the cleanest cities in India, UP has the dirtiest

Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have emerged as the top two states with most number of clean cities, 12 and 11, respectively, in India’s top 50 clean cities, according to Swachh Survekshan 2017, an annual survey aimed at capturing the outcomes on ground of the ongoing efforts to make urban areas open defecation free and improve door-to-door collection, processing and disposal of municipal solid waste.

Indore in Madhya Pradesh was ranked India’s cleanest city among 434 cities and towns representing 60% of urban population in the country.

Cities and towns were judged on their performance based on making habitations open defecation-free and solid waste management, citizen feedback and independent observations.

While in 2016, there were 1,000 marks for the self-assessment data from municipal bodies, 500 marks for data collected through independent assessment and 500 marks for citizen feedback, the 2017 survey scored cities and towns for a maximum of 900 marks for data provided by the municipal body, 500 marks for data collected through independent assessment and 600 marks for citizen feedback. As the parameters in the self-assessment questionnaire were updated in 2017, a direct comparison of performance year-on-year is not possible.
As many as 3.7 million citizens provided feedback on cleanliness for Swachh Survekshan 2017 while Quality Council of India, an autonomous government body for quality assurance, deployed 421 assessors for on-site inspection of cleanliness in 434 cities and towns and another 55 for real-time monitoring of progress of survey and field inspections.

The other top ten clean cities in order were Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Surat (Gujarat), Mysuru (Karnataka)–which was last year’s cleanest city–Tiruchirapally (Tamil Nadu), New Delhi Municipal Council (Delhi), Navi Mumbai (Maharashtra), Vadodara (Gujarat) and Chandigarh.
READ MORE