Ride Sharing industry news coverage trend (January to September 2019)

Ride Sharing has become a popular service and app-based services like Uber, Pathao and Shohoz are transforming Dhaka’s transport sector. Uber first introduced app-based ride sharing services in Dhaka in the year 2016. Some ridesharing companies also allowed autorickshaws to operate. Among the ride sharing service providers, Shohoz and Pathao also function as courier services for e-commerce companies.

As the industry is thriving, a lot of news appears in the media along the way.

From January to September 2019, a total of 2,715 news coverage about the Ride Sharing Industry published into press and online media. Total CI/PX of newspaper, online news portal and magazine were 30,450, 2,083 and 360 respectively.

There were both positive and negative news coverage but among all, Uber’s positive news were most highlighted with a total of 594 coverage. Meanwhile, our media monitoring shows that press media published more negative news on combined industry news compared to positive coverage

According to share of coverage, 35% of the total news was about Uber, the San Francisco based ride sharing organization. On the other hand, 21% of the total news was about Pathao, which started its journey as a delivery service back in 2015 with own fleet of motorcycles and cycles. 19% of the total news was for the entire Industry.

The most highlighted positive news of Uber was “Uber Hits Street of Sylhet”, which was covered in 26 publications with Tk 1,385,100 worth PR value. “Pathao’s Elius, cartoonist Morshed in Forbes under-30 list” was the most highlighted topic for Pathao, which got 58 news coverage. The other notable ride sharing organizations are, Shohoz, Obhai, Jobike, Piickme, Ezzyr. These organizations got significantly less coverage than Pathao and Uber.

Dhaka Tribune published highest number of positive reports (84) on Ride sharing Industry, while another leading newspaper of the country, The Daily Star, published 78 reports about the industry. Bonik Barta, Jugantor, Samakal are also on the top 5 list of positive news publishing newspapers.

On the other hand, when it comes about negative news, jagonews24.com and Janakantha published highest number of negative news about Ride Sharing industry. Online web portal jagonews24.com published 28 negative news of Ride Sharing industry during the time and one of the well-known Bangla newspapers Janakantha published 27 news which had negative topic for the industry. Some of the top negative news of the industry were: UBER driver found dead in city, Pathao rider killed in accident, Shohoz summoned to court over illegal foreign employment.

Like most of the trends in countries flow to this side of the world behind time, ride-sharing is also no exception. Quite a few ride-sharing companies are emerging to cater to the mounting public demand but as we seen in our media tracking study, only a few could attract the attention of media till now. Let’s see how the smaller ride-sharing startups in the country do in future.