In a nation where various patriarchal or non-patriarchal factors would have prevented women from travelling to work, Ubers, Olas, and Rapidos have emerged as a dependable chariot that is propelling the number of women in the workforce higher.
Thanks to ride-hailing services, it is now anticipated that increased access to transportation will result in over 6% more women working in India’s top five cities by 2028. According to a survey, these cities might see the addition of almost half a million more female workers if ride-hailing firms catered to their needs.
“We estimate that greater access to ride-hailing services, which make transport more inclusive for women, could boost the number of women in the workforces of Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai by between 3.7% and 6.5% by 2028, over and above the natural growth in the size of the population,” according to a report by Oxford Economics that Uber commissioned. The CII session on ‘Women on the Move’ featured the presentation of the ride hailing study, A Platform For Women’s Economic Opportunity, by Union minister Smriti Irani.
The analysis reveals how ride-hailing services have assisted women in overcoming barriers to entering the job. It is based on a survey that was conducted in five major cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai. It emphasises how these services help people access a variety of employment options, ensure safety, and strike a balance between work and family.
Of the female passengers who were employed, forty percent stated that ride-hailing had been crucial in getting them their first job. For these women, it is crucial to strike a balance between job and family (half of them). 75% of those who used ride-hailing did so primarily out of concern for safety. A third indicated that ride-hailing improved their career prospects by expanding their employment options. Furthermore, a third of employed female riders attributed their transition from part-time to full-time work to ride-hailing.
Furthermore, on Wednesday, Sarvam AI- an AI firm, and Ola, a unicorn in the mobility space, both revealed that they have large language models (LLMs) trained to produce text in Hindi.
Based on Meta’s open-source Llama2-7B architecture, Sarvam has launched its first Hindi LLM OpenHathi-Hi-v0.1, which offers performance comparable to GPT-3.5 for Indic languages, the company announced in a blog post.
