“When we look at the average time to begin a trip — from the time a driver accepts a trip to when he picks up the rider and starts the trip —
that is the highest in the world for Uber here in India,” said Mr. Jain, the president of Uber India.
Many drivers arrive after working as private drivers for middle-
and upper-class Indians; those jobs can be grueling — drivers work long hours, are expected to be constantly on call, and often aren’t accorded much respect for their work.
“Most of these guys used to work as private drivers, and they weren’t treated
that well — they were almost invisible to their employers,” said Kalpana Behara, the head of Uber’s driver training center and customer service in Hyderabad.
“The way to think about it is that India is a super-important place in the world
that has huge cities, with huge transportation needs, that we want to serve,” Mr. Kalanick said in an interview.
Over the last few years, to persuade drivers that joining ride companies was worth the cost of a long-term commitment to a new car, Uber
and Ola gave drivers bonus payments on top of their standard fare for each ride, as Uber had done in China.