With several states putting cities under a complete lockdown, Uber and Ola has suspended operations in some cities.
Uber has said that Uber services across India have been affected with having to comply with government directives to limit movement for reducing the spread of COVID-19.
As of Monday (March 23), Uber ride services will not be available in several cities, except to meet the essential and urgent travel needs.
The cities in which Uber has suspended services include Tirupati, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh; Hyderabad in Telangana; Bengaluru, Mysuru and Mangalore in Karnataka; Delhi NCR; Mumbai, Nagpur and Pune in Maharashtra; Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot in Gujarat.
In Jharkhand, operations have been suspended in Dhanbad, Jamshedpur, and Ranchi. In Punjab, its been suspended in Amritsar, Chandigarh, Jalandhar and Ludhiana; Ajmer, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, Udaipur in Rajasthan; Agra, Bareilly, Kanpur, Lucknow, Prayagraj, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and in West Bengal, in Asansol, Durgapur and Siliguri.
While Ola has not yet outlined which cities it has suspended operations in, it told a few media outlets that it would be offering a minimal network of vehicles to support essential services.
“Ola will continue to encourage citizens to limit travel only for essential emergency needs as per the Government’s directive. We will enable a minimal network of vehicles to support essential services in cities, wherever applicable, as part of this national effort to reduce the contagion of COVID-19,” an Ola spokesperson told TechCrunch.
This is in line with government directives where Ola has been suspended in cities that are currently under lockdown.
The government said on Sunday that 75 districts across the country have been put on lockdown, where only essential services would be available to contain the spread of coronavirus.
The districts where lockdown was announced are from states that include Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
Last week, Uber and Ola also announced suspension of their shared mobility service: Ola Share and Uber Pool.
"In our efforts to curb the spread of COVID- 19, we are temporarily suspending the "Ola Share" category until further notice… The temporary suspension of Ola Share services is an attempt to encourage social distancing for all cases of essential travel for citizens,” Ola said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Uber said, “We are determined to help reduce the spread of coronavirus in the cities we serve. With that in mind, we are suspending the Uber Pool service across India.”