Vinay had joined Uber in summer 2014, when the app had found success in the US and was growing rapidly. Vinay Ramani on growing Uber China and working alongside Travis Kalanick He adds: “If 1,000 people join Uber today for the first time, as many as 700 people pay in cash.” To almost everyone’s surprise, it worked well.Īccording to Vinay, it’s since been rolled out to more than 90% of the company’s markets – which the website Uber Estimator now estimates to stand at about 900 cities in 85 countries. In May 2015, Uber Cash was integrated into the app’s payment options for services in Hyderabad, India. “Even Travis opposed it but, even though he didn’t think it would work, he said to try it in the spirit of experimenting.”
“I faced a lot of opposition to cash at Uber because the app gives passengers this magic moment where they walk away from the car without paying – and what I was suggesting destroyed that. If they have a good experience, they’re more likely to pay on the app the second time. “So by offering cash, they could try Uber without much commitment.
“If you think about it, if you install this app and it’s asking for your credit card details immediately when you’ve never even used it before, are you going to give them? “But everyone ran around with cash in their pockets – it’s everywhere in emerging economies – so I said ‘let’s accept cash’. “Digital payments weren’t working well in India,” recalls the 41-year-old, who worked closely with Uber founder, and then-CEO Travis Kalanick, during his three years at the company. Vinay Ramani’s role in establishing Uber Cash Vinay Ramani, charged with growing its presence in Asia and Latin America, made a suggestion that was scoffed at by some who believed it effectively reversed its entire modus operandi – putting forward the idea of introducing Uber cash payments. Its app-based ride-hailing service and cashless payment system was slowly revolutionising how people ordered a cab, and the start-up was now eyeing up world domination.
Uber was a few years old when its senior execs gathered around a table to discuss how to break into India with the same force in which it had blasted down the doors to the US taxi market.
Now chief product officer at Estonia-founded sales software provider Pipedrive, he shares his Palo Alto stories with Dan Robinson – including what it’s like to work closely with Uber founder Travis Kalanick Over the past two decades, Vinay Ramani has been at the very heart of the Silicon Valley boom in senior roles at Google, Uber, Yahoo! and Adobe. Pipedrive chief product officer Vinay Ramani Pipedrive CPO Vinay Ramani has held senior roles at Google, Uber, Yahoo! and Adobe over the past 20 years