Uber completed seven years of operations in Sri Lanka and shared some interesting numbers as it touched a new milestone. In its seven years of operations, Uber has completed over 555 million kilometers in Uber trips around the island nation. That’s enough kilometers to travel to the moon from Earth and back 725 times!
With more than 150,000+ driver partners on the platform and having served more than 2 million riders, Uber has revolutionized the way Sri Lankans travel. Starting with car rides in 2015, Uber has grown its portfolio to include offerings such as ‘Intercity’ for travel between cities; ‘Rentals’ for multi-stop, multi-hour journeys; Tuks and Moto for affordable travel that improve first and last mile connectivity; and ‘Connect’, for door-to-door package deliveries.
To mark this special occasion, Uber celebrated the contribution of driver partners to the success of its operations. 7 highly engaged driver partners were awarded trophies and gifts worth LKR 35,000 each including shopping vouchers and travel accessories.
A recent survey by UK-based research firm Public First revealed that 91% of the riders in Sri Lanka value convenience as the most important reason to use Uber. Each year, Uber saves riders an estimated 3.7 million hours.
As per Sri Lanka, ridesharing has been the most significant transport innovation they have experienced in the last decade. In 2021 alone, Uber unlocked an estimated LKR 81 billion in economic value for the Bangladesh economy. This included both the impact of earnings of driver partners facilitated by Uber and the wider indirect and induced multiplier effect created throughout the company's wider supply chain.
As a pioneer in the ridesharing industry in Sri Lanka, Uber was the first to introduce several critical safety features on the platform, such as a feature to share GPS location with loved ones through ‘Share my trip’; proactively detect trip anomalies through ‘RideCheck’; screening personal phone numbers to maintain privacy through ‘phone anonymization’; and giving riders an option to share fare costs through ‘split fare’ feature.