Joy and nightmare on the highway

The first time I encountered CabBazar online I was thrilled Therersquos always a certain juicy pleasure in finding local lads who are giving multinationals a run for their money I had to travel to a small town called Kashele a little beyond Karjat and neither Uber nor Ola even had it on their dropdown menusCabBazar offered me a journey a good bit cheaper than its competitors and didnrsquot count the hours I had use of the vehicle till 1159 pm though I would have to pay for extra kilometres used beyond a limit All good and fairThe driver was personable and informed the car was clean and the journey was relaxed safe and delightful I began recommending CabBazar strongly to my friendsIt took me two more journeys to realise that CabBazar had nothing to do with the pleasant quality of my trip Irsquod just been lucky to get a good ride the first timeYesterdayrsquos CabBazar journey from Pune to Mumbai was a nonstop nightmare of five hours The exact reason was that CabBazar had nothing to do with it They just connect you with random drivers and collect their percentageI planned to hop into a CabBazar taxi at 3 pm and reach Mumbai at around 630 pm I booked a vehicle the previous night and was given the booking ID of 652445 A Rohit Jadhav would pick me up his number was provided So far so goodA little later that changed and I received a new driverrsquos name Arun Pol When no car showed up at 3 pm I tried calling Mr Pol but got no response After 20 minutes I called CabBazar in Gurugram and was told that the driver had arrived 15 minutes ahead of time tried calling me and receiving no response had gone home Irsquod been in a signalfree zone attending a meeting CabBazar started discussing whether I wanted screenshotsThe actual driver showed up 45 minutes late Arun Pol the owner of the vehicle generally slept all afternoon I was told My driver Shivaji was an unkempt ruffian with a shock of hair He was rude chatty and irreverent but mainly a seasoned hustler whose main concern was about who would pay the toll chargesAll tolls were covered in my fare I told him CabBazar confirmedThis agitated Shivaji greatly paying tolls he claimed would leave him with no income He called his boss who ordered him to cancel my ride and let me off in the middle of the highway if I refused to pay the toll Gun to my head I agreedBut by now Shivaji was on to a new scheme By taking on an additional passengermdashperhaps a pretty young lady he suggested slylymdashhe could spare me the toll charges and incidentally supplement his incomeIgnoring my protests he canvassed passengers at a bus stop for half an hour until he found a gentle civil Dadarbound Maharashtrian who unlike me seemed unflappableNext the car needed to top up on CNG Another 20 minutes passedNot long afterwards Shivaji stopped at the roadside sign of a freelance huckster who stood in the rain recharging FastTags for a price For 45 minutes we watched impotently as Shivaji gesticulated and bargained with the FastTag shyster making numerous calls receiving OTPs making us scan QR codes and shuck out more money We reached the outskirts of Pune 15 hours after boardingThe nightmare began now Shivaji drove like a madman swerving between speeding cars in blinding rain while loudly discussing politics with his hapless Maharashtrian extra passenger Since he liked to look at the person he spoke with his eyes were off the road for long spells Since he was expressive he frequently gesticulated using both hands taking them off the steering wheel However he honked more or less continuously When I implored him to slow down and focus on driving he laughed gaily and told me in battered English to ldquothink the positive thoughtsrdquoAmit Dhall who founded CabBazar in 2017 with two partners and 150000 seed funding from India Accelerator unwittingly nails why a CabBazar ride can be so terrifying their approach is based on minimal interference Unlike Uber and Ola they are ldquoaggregatorsrdquo rather than service providersmdasha complicated way of saying that they put customers and taxis in touch with each other and then leave the rest to providenceTheir revenue model is skipping quality control to keep costs lowldquoOur technical platform takes care that human intervention is only required for support in some special casesrdquo says Dhall in a published interview ldquoThe system works on its ownrdquoWell that happened CabBazarrsquos few humans refused to intervene and their insane technology assigned driver after driver to me ending my trip at will after saddling me with a maniacal buffoon for five hours When I described my experience to a CabBazar rep his best reply was that I should include my thoughts in my feedbackI used to strongly recommend this company I now advise you to walk to your destination rather than take a CabBazar taxiYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper