As with many of these things, it certainly looks good on paper. But you wonder whether it's just the same kind of selective spin and PR as Uber's contribution at the end.
For example, they may have signed up 8,000 drivers, which is obviously very good, even by the standard of huge numbers in London. But how much work are they actually doing with the new app? I'd guess they're all also signed up with Uber or other platforms
Why frustrated Uber drivers are launching a rival apphttps://www.thetimes.com/uk/transport/a ... -8fpkd00knRide Nuff promises a fairer deal for London’s taxi drivers and customers by taking a smaller commission than Uber — and it has just gained a licence to operateTayfun Keskin has been a full-time Uber driver in London for more than a decade but has had enough: “We can’t as drivers make ends meet, there needs to be a solution.”
The solution, he hopes, is Ride Nuff, a “fairer” taxi-hailing company that allows drivers to keep more of the money they earn from trips.
Using his background in IT and taking inspiration from similar companies in North America, Keskin, 34, devised the app and last month, after three years of work, his company secured a licence from Transport for London to operate in the capital.
By tapping into his network of colleagues and spreading the word via social media, Keskin and his two close friends and co-founders Caglar Oner, 36, and Efkan Altinok, 36, have managed to raise about £200,000 before Ride Nuff’s launch.
They now have cars ferrying hundreds of passengers round in north, east and central London with about 8,000 drivers on board, many of whom share Keskin’s frustration with Uber.
“It was the commission. Uber started off with a 15 per cent commission on each ride. Now, because they are doing dynamic pricing and dynamic commission, it sometimes goes up to 35 per cent, sometimes 50 per cent. That plus all the expenses: fuel cost, insurance.
“An Uber driver sometimes has to spend over ten hours just to put £100 in his pocket.”
A study last year by academics at the University of Oxford said that since 2023, when Uber brought in a new algorithm to decide fares, drivers were earning “substantially less” with the company’s median commission at just under 30 per cent a ride.
This meant drivers on average were earning £15.98 an hour, it said, not taking into account other expenses. “Post-dynamic pricing, Uber’s passengers now pay higher prices, but the drivers are not better off,” the study wrote.
Ride Nuff’s model is different. The company takes a flat rate of 50p per ride and will charge its drivers a subscription fee of £30 per week to use the app.
It says this means a driver earns about a third more each month with fares overall also cheaper for passengers because of their refusal to employ “surge pricing” — meaning each ride will always cost the same, no matter how busy the roads are.
They also have a large cohort of people doing their marketing “organically”.
“The drivers in their daily Uber life, they speak to the customers,” Keskin said. “They try to spread this company as much as they can. They believe in it so much.”
With existing Uber drivers able to seamlessly switch between the apps of other providers, many, Keskin said, will drive for both Uber and Ride Nuff, recruiting new customers for future business.
Altinok, who leads the start-up’s marketing, was expecting some backlash from the Silicon Valley giant as Ride Nuff grows.
“We know they are watching us,” he said. “Uber has been an inspiring story for us, honestly, it was part of what gave us the idea. But today it feels very far from where it started.”
“We are disrupting the disruptors,” Keskin said. “They were first but now we are here.”
An Uber spokesperson said: “More and more private hire drivers choose to earn with Uber because we offer flexibility over where and when they work — and that includes transparency on the destination and how much they will earn on every trip before they decide whether to accept it. All drivers on Uber also receive industry-leading benefits including holiday pay and a pension. We work closely with our union partner, GMB, to represent the interests of everyone earning on the platform and to raise the standard of flexible work across the UK.”
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