Uber testing prepaid-item pickup from native shops in India

Uber has quietly began testing a characteristic that lets gig employees decide up pay as you go gadgets from native shops and ship them to prospects in India.

Known as “Store Pickup,” the characteristic debuted in choose U.S. cities in December and is now expanded to Delhi-NCR, TechCrunch has completely realized. Clients can order pickups and deliveries and observe them reside by the Uber app — much like how they observe rides.

Uber’s Retailer Pickup will probably face competitors from Indian platforms, together with Dunzo, Rapido and Swiggy, which provide related providers to permit prospects to get their packages picked up from native shops. Nonetheless, the most recent rollout brings one other selection. It means that Uber sees a enterprise alternative in delivering gadgets from native shops in India — identical to within the U.S. The characteristic additionally helps Uber additional embed the app into prospects’ on a regular basis lives.

That mentioned, the Retailer Pickup characteristic comes with some limitations. As an illustration, the merchandise set for pickup on the native retailer must be 5 kilograms (11 lbs) or much less. It must also be valued at as much as 5,000 Indian rupees ($60) and could be collected with out requiring identification proof or a credit score/ debit card used for buying. Customers can’t have alcohol, medicine, medicine, firearms or “dangerous or illegal items” delivered.

Uber declined to remark.

Uber requires prospects to enter pickup particulars earlier than initiating their deliveries, which embrace the native store identify and deal with and pickup directions for the motive force, together with whether or not they should decide up the merchandise from a customer support space. Clients may add proof of buy and add an order affirmation quantity to assist drivers efficiently fulfill the pickup.

Along with Retailer Pickup, Uber provides its common Join characteristic to let prospects ship packages by its app. Nonetheless, the Retailer Pickup characteristic is particularly for arranging deliveries from native shops.

Final 12 months, Uber launched Retailer Pickup throughout 1,700 U.S. cities and cities, together with Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orange County, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Francisco and Tampa Bay. The corporate additionally had an analogous same-day native supply characteristic referred to as UberRUSH obtainable in some markets, which was discontinued in 2018.