Crypto firm director joins online rant on Bengaluru's cab problem; See post here

Voices of dissent rose yet again on Twitter regarding the problems faced by citizens during commute throughout Bengaluru after the editor-in-chief of a crypto exchange firm joined the conversation.

Ankit Vengurlekar, the Director and Editor-in-Chief of CoinSwitch Kuber, a cryptocurrency exchange platform founded in 2017 in Bengaluru, joined the online rant on the city's ongoing ride-hailing problems, and the post is going viral.

The top executive spends 8 to 10 days a month in the city and asked for solutions to commute easily. (Parveen Kumar/HT File Photo)

Sharing a message on Twitter on Wednesday, he said, "60 minutes of cab hunting and NO CAB! Absolutely terrible state of affairs in Bangalore. Hitched a ride with colleague. Got off on the main road. Now paying Rs. 500 for 9 kms in a riksha. What an awful city for commuting Bangalore is! Ghanta India ka silicon valley."

The tweet now has over 4000 likes and netizens have been pouring in with comments. A user by the handle Pooja Bandu wrote: “Every time I try to hail a cab, I feel @Uber_India and @Olacabs have shut shop. Never ever find one when needed. And autos, am 100% sure that they have some other business going on because they just want to sit idle and never come to any of the destinations that we request for!”

To this, Ola Support replied and said, “This is definitely not the experience we want our customers to have. To help us get to the bottom of this issue at the earliest, please share your CRN number via Direct Message.”

However, not all Twitterati were of the same view, as one user wrote: “Bangalore is not responsible for private cab-hailing services, have you ever tried taking a bus? People like you talk about our city as if you just dropped down from some super developed country that doesn't have any problems at all. You're free to go back, you know.”

Vergurlekar further consulted the internet for solutions to his problem. “What is the recipe for folks like me who spend 8 -10 days here every month?” he asked. Suggestions from e-scooters to rental cars came forward.

India's two biggest cab aggregators Ola and Uber have come under fire multiple times in the past from irked customers who have faced issues related to payment modes, repeated cancellations or longer waiting periods. Amid rising complaints on the alleged unfair practices of the ride-haling firms, the Karnataka government has called up the two companies and assured citizens that it would look into the issues.

The aggregators are also stretched thin as fewer cabs ply on Bengaluru's roads lately. Only around 30,000 cabs are on the roads today as compared to the 1 lakh-odd cabs that were in the city during the pre-COVID times.

Notably, a Bengaluru resident's tweet had previously gone viral after he detailed events of one bad day when a journey to Mysore with his family ended in a nightmare after they were stranded on the highway in the middle of an Ola trip.