Company’s record earnings reportedly coincide with drivers’ continued, entirely separate complaints about unchanged per-trip rates
SINGAPORE A major regional superapp’s announcement of record half-year profit drew a notably different reaction from company leadership than from Ahmad Farid, a driver interviewed outside the company’s headquarters who noted, with genuine and specific bluntness, that his own per-trip rate “has not moved even slightly in the entire time this apparently record profit was being generated.”
The Actual Earnings Figures, As Announced
The company reported revenue up sharply year-on-year alongside a substantial half-year profit, figures executives described in the earnings call as reflecting “genuinely strong operational efficiency and platform growth across our core markets.”
What “Operational Efficiency” Apparently Means to Farid
“I know what that means,” he said, gesturing at his own phone displaying the same per-trip rate he says has held steady for well over a year despite the company’s now considerably improved financial position.
How the Company Responded to Driver Concerns
A spokesperson pointed to periodic incentive programs and bonus structures as evidence drivers do benefit from company growth, a framing Farid and several fellow drivers interviewed characterized as “technically true and also not really the same thing as a base rate increase.”
The Broader Pattern This Reflects
Labor analysts note this exact dynamic, record platform profitability alongside static gig worker compensation, recurring consistently across the region’s superapp sector, a structural feature several described as “baked into the entire business model rather than any single company’s specific choice.”
What Farid Plans to Do About This
Keep driving, mostly, having “no real alternative that pays comparably,” a resignation he delivers with the specific weariness of someone who’s watched this exact earnings announcement pattern repeat several times now without any corresponding change to his own actual income. Further Southeast Asia business coverage continues at bohiney.com.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
