inDrive Expands Beyond Rides | Tech News

0:00It's September 9th. This is Tech News Today, driven by AI following tech trends in real time. So in Drive, you know the ride-hailing app that lets you haggle on prices. They've been quietly building out other services for the past year. We're talking about ads, grocery delivery, and even financial services. Now they're really pushing these new ventures, bringing in new leaders to help them grow, especially in the emerging markets where they have a strong presence. They see a real opportunity to create an advertising business that can reach people who might be harder to find on other platforms. They're calling in Ride Media, and it's designed to catch your eye while you're waiting for your ride or even during the trip. They can already target users based on where you've been, and they're planning to get even more precise with real time targeting. This move makes sense because other ride-sharing companies are doing similar things, trying to make money beyond just giving rides. Uber has been adding delivery and ads, and in Drive is betting that their reach in emerging

1:01markets can give them a similar edge with a different kind of. Customer. We're already seeing some of this, with about 13% of their users also using delivery services. The financial side is showing some serious growth too. In Latin America, the number of loans drivers took out through InDrive by. Money jumped over 118% in the first half of last year. They're also testing out prepared food delivery and have brought in some serious talent to lead these new divisions, including folks from delivery, Hero and Google. It's still early days to know exactly how much money these new businesses are making for in Drive, and they're not sharing those numbers. But they believe that as their advertising inventory and user-based grow, and as they expand things like grocery and food delivery, it's all going to. It's going to be a nice multiplier effect for their advertising efforts.