#89 - The Man Who Gamed Uber

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
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Okay, everyone, we're gonna have a little bit of a special episode. This first segment is 20 minutes, and then after that 20 minutes, it's gonna be normal. But this first segment, I found this guy a couple years ago who runs this service that, frankly, I thought is kind of a scam. And we, Sean and I debated, our friend Andrew was like, hey, you shouldn't have scammers on there. And I kind of agree with him, but this guy's story is incredibly fascinating. And I don't wanna tell you too much about it, but just listen to it. But we found this guy in India and he talked to us at midnight, his time in India. And frankly, I'm inspired by this guy. And I don't know if I agree with him or disagree with him, but I completely love the hustle. And I think that you guys should just give this a listen because it's super fascinating.
Let us know what you think. Tweet at me, TheSamParr.
Tweet at Sean, I don't actually know Sean's handle, but search Shaan Puri, S-H-A-A-N space P-U-R-I.
And let us know what you think.

**Shaan Puri** (1:37)
Yeah, what's up? We got a guest here with us, Sam. Abhishek is here, how are you doing, man?

**Abhishek Kumar Maurya** (1:43)
I'm great, I'm doing good.

**Shaan Puri** (1:45)
We've been talking about something you built. We've mentioned it on the last couple episodes, but I'm glad you're here so you can tell people about what you've built and what it does, and we can debate a little bit about it. So Abhishek, can you give us the one minute version of what it is that you built?

**Abhishek Kumar Maurya** (2:05)
So we are using a referral system to give customers the credits which they can use to their rides or their eat orders now, now that eat order is available, so that they'll get discount on their every order, like up to that 50% of the order, auto value.

**Sam Parr** (2:26)
Okay, so about two years ago, or three years ago, I forget when you started, I got an email from a friend of mine who knows everything. He follows all the latest interesting stuff and he loves like hackers.
And he goes, there's this guy, you're in India, right?
He said, there's this guy in India and I don't know how it works, but somehow he's accumulated hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of Uber credits and you can buy credits from him and ultimately get Uber rides for half off. So you know how Uber gives people $10 off their first ride and gives the referral person another $10 in credit. This guy somehow accumulated massive amounts of $10 credits and you could buy his $10 credits for $5. Now, the thing that Shaan and I debated was like, is this ethical? Is this wrong? Is this right? Who knows? And I think Shaan was like, I think it's fine, but regardless, I think it's incredibly interesting because, and I want you to get, maybe you could explain how this works, but from my perspective, it seems like you've got a crew of like hundreds or thousands of people taking rides and you're either you're buying, are you buying their credits from them?

**Shaan Puri** (3:42)
What are you doing? Explain how it works.

**Abhishek Kumar Maurya** (3:46)
It's a basic arbitrage, like arbitrage. In India, yeah, arbitrage.
In the US, they used to give like $10, $20 referral value. In India, they used to give 100 rupees, 200 rupees, 300 rupees in rupees. And in India, one ride cost, it starts from 50 rupees also. 50 rupees or 25 rupees. If you convert it to dollars, it will be like 30 cents, 40 cents, 50 cents max.
So we are taking ride using that 50 cents. And in turn, Uber is giving us $10 in US.

**Shaan Puri** (4:21)
So the US account is the referrer.
So I refer Indian Rider. Indian Rider takes a 30 cent ride and I get a $10 credit because I'm a US customer and I get US credit rates. That's the idea.

**Sam Parr** (4:34)
Yeah, and so for listeners, 100 rubies equals $1.4.