Product Strategy
Routing Uber's existing infrastructure into non-emergency medical transport across ageing India.
Caregivers of aging family members in dense cities of India undergo immense anxiety coordinating mobility for critical medical appointments, where a missed dialysis or chemo session is a clinical emergency, not a minor inconvenience.
Traditional Non-Emergency Medical Transport (NEMT) in India is fragmented across sub-10,000 local driver fleets with zero live tracking. Uber holds a massive 100x driver scale advantage (1M+ drivers in India vs. 10K local fleets), routing AI that cuts no-shows by 15-20%, and zero-CAC access to ~44M active riders. However, Uber structurally struggles with medical compliance, driver readiness for assisted transit, and operational reliability where peak-surge speed cannot replace non-negotiable patient trust.
I authored an entry strategy and built an interactive product workflow for Uber Health. Rather than a consumer pay-per-use feature, I recommend entering via a B2B2C Subscription Model anchored in hospital and insurer partnerships (Example: Apollo Hospitals, Ayushman Bharat framework) across two target metros (Bengaluru and Mumbai). I designed four core mechanisms: a Care Coordination Dashboard for live caregiver tracking, a Trusted Driver Circle (matching 85% of rides to 5–8 familiar drivers), Golden Hour accessibility mode, and Recurring Bookings.
I could have proposed buying custom wheelchair-accessible fleets or launching an on-demand consumer "Uber Medical" button. I explicitly cut both. Purchasing physical fleets destroys Uber's asset-light marketplace unit economics, while an on-demand consumer launch introduces instant operational failure points during peak traffic hours. Constraining entry to pre-scheduled, B2B2C subscription corridors was the only bet that guaranteed route density and operational predictability without building an asset-heavy business from scratch.
The size of the prize is capturing a slice of the ~$7B regional APAC NEMT market (growing at 11% CAGR), targeting ~$180M in Year-1 revenue in India (at 500k monthly subscribers with a $30 ARPU). The operational gate metric I would watch is the Schedule Reliability Rate (95% on-time pickups for pre-scheduled care windows). I would track Caregiver Cancellation Rate as a counter-metric to catch ghost auto-bookings early.
The risk that could completely kill this product is Driver Readiness & Liability Friction (drivers refusing assisted pickups or failing senior care standards). During the 30-60-90 day pilot, I would de-risk this by testing a "Trusted Driver Certification" tier, awarding verified drivers a 20% fare premium and guaranteed weekly recurring routes in exchange for completing basic senior-assistance modules.
This case explored: