Lyft Launches New App For Its Driver Mentor Program

Lyft announced last week the expansion of its driver mentor program with new improvements and more local support. These changes are meant to get qualified drivers faster on the road. To this effect, the on-demand ride company is now recruiting General Managers for 10 different U.S. cities such as home-based San Francisco, Miami or Philadelphia. “We’ve gotten beyond niche,” said a Lyft spokesperson to Re/code. “Now we’re focused on gaining a larger presence in these cities.”

As the saying goes, time is money. The sooner the Lyft drivers are operational, the better for everyone. So the changes to the mentor program include an app which enables new drivers to ask for a driver mentor quickly and easily. On its blog, Lyft says that after only a few months of trial, costs linked to getting drivers successfully onboard decreased while the number of activated drivers increased.

According to Re/code, Lyft’s new GM approach is Uber-inspired. The main difference is that Lyft’s GMs will primarily focus on recruiting and dispatching driver mentors and not actual drivers. The GMs will also be responsible for local original promotions and for letting drivers know areas to avoid due to traffic or weather.

With a national growth of 500 percent observed in 2014, Lyft’s total evaluation is currently at $2.5 billion – a long way from Uber’s $41 billion, which is currently in 300 cities, serving 58 countries. The task to catch up with Uber almost seems insurmountable. Recently leaked documents obtained by Bloomberg reveal the expensive price Lyft is paying to keep up with world champion Uber. Lyft is said to be spending millions to maintain second place in the ride-sharing market while showing slow growth with a 512 percent increase for 2015. But investors seem to believe in the rising star, which just received $150 million from billionaire activist Carl Icahn, also known for being eBay’s largest shareholder.

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