Why UrbanClap is profitable but Uber will never be.

Dear Uber: You are not brokers. You are service providers. The customer does not call Tukaram. She calls Uber. 

Your service is delivered by service partners, who are in a profit-sharing contract with you. If you do not take care of these service partners, it is not their brand that suffers. It is yours. 

Given that your customer care and central brand oversight are non-existent, your entire service delivery depends on one person - your service delivery partner. The guy you are squeezing. The guy who can share his number with the customer at any time and get into a direct arrangement, leaving you out of the loop.

If you squeeze your driver partners to a point where being with you is purely a function of your mono/duopolistic practices, you will end up with high driver and customer churn, non-stop recruitment and CACs, poor delivery, and consistent brand erosion. 

It's not a bug, it's a feature of your business model. 

And therefore, you can not hope to be profitable. You are in the business of burning up public moneys. 

Here is another story. 

Urbanclap gave social benefits to ALL their service partners. It understood their specific needs and created benefits for them. When an Urbanclap service provider comes to us, s/he does not share their number. They say that a positive rating on the app means more to them than a direct order next time. 

Urbanclap's losses have shrunk, and they turned profitable in April 2024. 

Your losses, on the other hand, have widened considerably year on year. 

Short summary: Intermediaries are not brokers. They are service providers. Asset lean model does not mean abdication of service quality responsibility.

The Carlson Tucker Interview with Suchir Balaji's mother

 Last week, I watched the Carlson Tucker interview with Suchir Balaji's mother.

After the cooling off period also, my mind is NUMB at the travesty of justice happening here.

To be named a material witness but be provided NO Protection at all.

To be killed the night he returned from a holiday.

To have a wig at the crime scene and not even bother to examine it.

If he shot himself at one spot, why is there blood at multiple spots?

And I tend to agree with her - Suchir was not threatening someone's business. The punishment for that would be not having a job in the industry.

When our young professionals hear the stories of whistleblowers, they hear imprisonment in a single embassy for years, death, and at the very least, a transfer order. Just once, I would like them to hear a story that ends with success. So they learn to speak up.

#SuchirBalaji

2024 Reading Summary

20 books. That's one book every 18.5 days. 

Three non-fiction. The rest are all fiction, detective fiction, short stories, or poetry. 

One was a comic book and one was a joke book. 

Fewer Hindi books on the list than I would like. 

Have ordered 3 Punjabi books also. 2025 resolution is to start reading Punjabi and to read a lot more Hindi.  

First Target: Malvikagnimitram.