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Uber offering INR 600 for signup via referrals till February 1

Uber has been my favourite local travel solution for about a year now. Uber has been on an expansion spree across India, having operations in 10 cities across India now. One of the best parts about using Uber is their on-demand app, which shows you the location of the nearest cab and you can order it. There are mostly enough cars on the road to bring you one within ten minutes. The UberBlack service usually has Toyota Innovas and premium cars around India, while the UberX service has midsize economy sedans. UberX usually prices at a slight premium to local transport options such as cab, but I find it reasonable enough to have made a switch to UberX in Mumbai…

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Mumbai: INR 150 Amazon voucher for booking a cabride via Olacabs

One of the new things that Ola has taken from the Uber playbook is to help hail regular licensed cabs via their app. A few weeks ago, they started to offer the ability to hail black-yellow cabs which are licensed cabs in Mumbai, via the app. Ola has apparently seeded the market with a lot of devices with taxi drivers that help the taxi drivers get a ride via their app. Except, in this case, the ride is metered like a regular cab ride, and paid for in cash. Ola has gone about town popularising this service, and putting in a good amount of cash in the hands of drivers to make sure they accept rides via the Ola app.…

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#FreeUberWeek across India: 5 Free Uber rides

Uber has been on the rise in India. Just last week, they activated a new city in their portfolio, making it 11 Indian cities in 13 months of operations here. Recently, they added the capability to pay with a digital wallet in India, and this week they are all out to promote it across the country. Here is what you need to do… Step 1: Add an UberWallet (via Paytm) to your payment account. Step 2: Add at least INR 100 in funds to your payment wallet. Step 3: Select your wallet as your payment method Between now and November 30, 6 pm IST, whenever you get a ride via the Uber app and choose to pay with Paytm, you…

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Uber adds digital wallet to allow use of debit cards & netbanking in India

Uber sees India as its fastest growing market outside of the USA. However, ever since they launched in India a year ago, Uber had a big hiccup in their growth, which was the non-acceptance of debit cards. For those of you who are not in the know, Indians love debit cards and not credit cards as much, and they want to use money from their bank accounts to the extent possible. With RBI’s notification to Uber to stop using their payment gateway in India without 2-factor authentication, Uber had to solve this problem quickly because they’d have to shut down operations by end of October 2014 (later extended to November 2014). Anyhow, they’ve now added a new digital wallet from…

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Uber drops prices across India for Diwali

Uber has been on an expansion spree across India, having operations in 10 cities across India now. One of the best parts about using Uber is their on-demand app, which shows you the location of the nearest cab and you can order it. There are mostly enough cars on the road to bring you one within ten minutes. The second most favourite aspect for me about Uber, is the hassle-free transactions. You feed in your credit card details, and then Uber charges your credit card every time you make a ride with them, so no hassles of carrying cash around. Third most important aspect, they are across price points. The UberBlack service usually has Toyota Innovas and premium cars around…

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Uber may need to Indianise payment solution sooner

Trust your competitors to bring you down. I would file this under the dirty tricks department. Uber has been expanding pretty fast around India, and now offers services around ten cities. Cashless transactions and on-demand services are their differentiators, and I love the fact that I don’t have to deal with cash when I get out of the car, and it goes automatically on my credit card. In India, all credit card transactions are supposed to go through a 2-factor authentication. For offline purchases, this is Chip+PIN (+Signature as well, yet!). For online purchases, this means a One Time Password or Visa/MasterCard online authentication. Uber bypassed it by using a gateway based in the Netherlands. All the homegrown services such…

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