Ever since Uber begun offering their services in India, I had been hearing good things about them. So when I needed to hire a taxi on Wednesday, I decided to give Uber X a try.
What is Uber X?
Uber X is Uber’s economy taxi service and consists of a fleet of Maruti Dzire, Toyota Etios and Tata Manza sedans. While Uber Black (which was initially launched) consists of a fleet of luxury sedans eg. Honda Accord, Mercedes E-Class etc.
Why I chose Uber X over Uber Black?
Uber Black is Rs. 3 per kilometer costlier than Uber X and also has a base fare of Rs. 75 vs. Rs. 50 for Uber X.
While I was tempted to pay a little more and opt for Uber Black service, nearest vehicle from Chandni Chowk was around 25 minutes away, while Uber X vehicle was just 12 minutes away. So I decided to save money and time, by opting for Uber X.
Booking Experience

Uber App Interface
However, both my 3G connections were working erratically in Chandni Chowk and I was having a hard time booking taxi due to it. To my surprise, even though my connection died before I could submit destination, booking got made and I received a call from Sandeep, who was at New Delhi Railway Station.
He confirmed my booking and rendezvous point, and informed me that he will arrive within 15 minutes! Due to this factor alone, I would give full marks to Uber for booking experience.
Uber X service Experience
There was a procession taking place at Jain Mandir in Chandni Chowk and due to it; there was a huge traffic jam in front of Red Fort. Nevertheless, Sandeep managed to arrive on location only a few minutes late and promptly got down from taxi to help us load our luggage, as soon as he saw we had boxes which needed to be put in boot.
Our Uber X vehicle was a Maruti Dezire and it was neat and clean. Sandeep (our driver) was quite courteous and ride itself was quite good with nothing to complain about.
Uber X Cost
Uber differs from other taxi providers when it comes to calculating cost of travel, because they not only charge for the distance, but also the duration eg. with Uber X you pay Rs. 15 per kilometer and Rs. 2 per minute. Here is my bill from the journey, to help clarify things.
As you can see above, apart from paying base fare and distance charge, I also paid for the duration of my travel. However, thanks to a discount coupon I was using, I got Rs. 300 off my fare (use coupon code upqn0 to get Rs. 300 discount).
Due to this factor alone, Uber X turns out to be more expensive than services like TaxiForSure. Though you are getting an AC sedan as taxi and at least from my experience, drivers are fairly courteous. And since billing is done automatically to your credit card next day, there is no hassle of paying the exact change to the driver, at the end of trip.
Final Words
While I quite liked the service of Uber X and the fact that booking a taxi at the last moment is quite easy with them (you cannot do advance booking with Uber), I feel they can simplify their billing by removing per minute charge and hiking their per kilometer charge instead.
In all likelihood, I would again use the services of Uber (hopefully Black, next time around) in future. If you too are planning to use Uber X or Black, then you can use coupon code upqn0 to get Rs. 300 off your fare or you can click on this link to sign up.
8 Comments
Valuable review, thanks. Just a query: do we have an option to register our debit card in their app instead of credit card? thank you.
As far as I know, you will need Credit Card. You can try and contact their support and see if they allow Debit Cards as well.
Sure, thank you
Now the only way to pay for uber in india is Paytm (which you can recharge using your debit card). So yes you can now use uour debit card.
And Paytm sucks! Too bad these guys can no longer use credit cards directly.
In terms of whatever transaction services that PayTm provides, I have not faced any issues yet. Any particular issue that you faced?
*Another observation today: Seems Uber has increased the minimum amount that should be there in your PayTm from 100 to 200.
Paytm’s verification emails/sms never turns up in the first instance. I tried to verify my phone number couple of months ago and never got the OTP. Even yesterday I tried to do the same and only got the second sms and same also holds true for email verification (happened yesterday as well).
There are couple of other things, which I will be writing about in my new review of Uber.
Not sure if that happens while registering to PayTm at the time of Uber regn. I already had a PayTm account since long so I just added it.
Can it be related to mobile service provider? I have faced similar issues of sms not coming with HDFC,HSBC at times. On the other hand, I have helped other colleagues/friends to register for UBER & they seem to get the verification SMS .
I would love to see Uber tie-up with PayU (gives 5% CB on every transaction) 😉
Will be waiting for your latest review :-).