Finding your ride-hailing driver should be the easy part. In practice, it can mean standing at the wrong entrance to a shopping centre, watching a car circle the block or trying to explain through chat that you’re next to the other entrance, not the one the map apparently thinks you mean.
inDrive Panorama View is one of two new pickup features the ride-hailing platform is now rolling out in Johannesburg and Cape Town to try to fix that. South Africa is the first market globally to get Panorama View and Recommended Pickup Points, which are designed to make it easier for passengers and drivers to settle on the same meeting place before the ride begins.
Panorama View is the more immediately visible addition. Once a passenger has selected a pickup point, they can open a 360-degree street-level image of the location rather than relying exclusively on a map pin. That means being able to see the actual building entrance, street corner or landmark where they’re supposed to wait. If street-level imagery isn’t available for that location, the option won’t appear and the usual pickup map remains.
Recommended Pickup Points works slightly differently. It tries to identify places that should make it easier for the driver and passenger to meet before a driver is assigned, reducing the chances of someone choosing a technically correct location that’s awkward to reach or difficult to find. Passengers and drivers can still use in-app chat when they need to clarify the meeting point.
A map pin can be right and still be useless
The problem inDrive is trying to solve is remarkably ordinary, which is probably why it will be familiar to anyone who uses ride-hailing regularly.
A location pin can be geographically accurate while still being a bad pickup point. Shopping centres can have several entrances. Apartment complexes have gates that aren’t always accessible to visitors. Office parks have security-controlled access, transport hubs have designated pickup areas, and being on opposite sides of a major road can turn a distance of a few metres into a considerable detour.
There is also a particularly South African version of navigation that relies heavily on landmarks: the petrol station, the big garage, the shop on the corner or whichever entrance everybody who knows the area simply knows. It works surprisingly well until one of the people involved doesn’t know the area.
inDrive says combining better pickup suggestions with visual information should mean less time spent messaging one another, fewer drivers circling city blocks and less time passengers spend waiting outside.
The company has been trying to distinguish itself in an increasingly competitive South African ride-hailing market in other ways too. Its relatively low driver commission has arguably been one of its stronger arguments locally, alongside its better-known model that allows riders to propose a fare and drivers to accept, reject or counter it. Reframed previously argued that the commission structure is particularly meaningful because its value to drivers is measurable rather than dependent on broader claims about whether negotiated pricing necessarily produces fairer outcomes.
These new pickup tools address a different part of the transaction. Instead of changing what a ride costs or how that price is determined, they’re trying to remove some of the friction before anyone gets into the car.
Johannesburg and Cape Town are obvious testing grounds
The locations where inDrive says rides are concentrated help explain why Johannesburg and Cape Town make sense for the initial rollout.
In Johannesburg, Eastgate Shopping Centre has the highest ride volume on the platform, followed by central Johannesburg, Jabulani Mall and Braamfontein. Mall of Africa and Sandton City are also among its major pickup locations. In Cape Town, Liberty Promenade leads, followed by central Cape Town, Zevenwacht Mall and Canal Walk.
These aren’t necessarily places where finding someone should be difficult. They’re places where simply dropping a pin doesn’t always provide enough information. A large shopping centre may occupy several blocks and contain multiple entrances, parking areas and pickup zones within a relatively small geographic area. Two people can therefore arrive at roughly the same coordinates while still being nowhere near each other in practical terms.
Ashif Black, inDrive’s country representative, says wasted time at the beginning of a trip can also have consequences for drivers.
“The beginning of a ride sets the tone for the entire journey together, and being able to find one another efficiently without delay ensures the driver isn’t wasting time and, by extension, earning capability, and that passengers aren’t late getting where they need to be or stuck waiting longer than necessary in potentially unsafe locations,” Black says.
There is some logic to that argument, although these are new features and the effect hasn’t yet been demonstrated locally. Shorter pickup times could allow drivers to complete more trips and reduce how long passengers wait outside, but that depends on the quality of the recommended locations, the availability of street-level imagery and whether people actually use the tools as intended.
inDrive says it now operates across 48 countries and has recorded more than 400 million app downloads globally, so using South Africa as the first market for these particular features is notable. It also gives the company a fairly demanding place to test them. Johannesburg and Cape Town have no shortage of malls, office parks, apartment complexes and transport hubs where knowing that somebody is technically 50 metres away doesn’t necessarily help you find them.
Panorama View and Recommended Pickup Points are now available to inDrive users in Johannesburg and Cape Town, with inDrive saying availability will expand as street-level imagery becomes available in additional areas.