'We Think About the Rider More Than Any Other Company

Rapido co-founder Aravind Sanka talks to Neeraj Thakur and Deepsekhar Choudhury about how flexibility and fair pay helped his company disrupt the Ola-Uber duopoly. Edited excerpts

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Rapido has disrupted the duopoly of Uber-Ola. What have you done that others could not?

One of the things is that we think about the driver or rider a lot more than any other company. We think drivers have to be happy and they have to make money. Generally, what we have seen in consumer internet companies is they majorly take care of consumers but not of the other side of the marketplace.

There is persistent discontent among platform-based gig workers like delivery executives and drivers. How does Rapido decide fees?

Our framework is: if someone is spending an hour on our platform, they need to make at least Rs 70-80 after fuel costs for two-wheeler riders. We strongly believe we should give them flexibility. They can work whenever they are free.

If you look at the food delivery industry and the ecommerce industry, riders have to work on weekends, they have to work in the evenings. Work comes with a lot of terms and conditions.

Balancing worker and customer satisfaction can be tricky. How do you manage this balance?