Feb. 28: A 100-strong group held a protest outside the Uber office at Ballygunge Phanri demanding that the app cab aggregator continued to pay drivers the incentives they had been promised.

The protesters, under the banner of the Joint Council of Luxury Taxi Association, alleged that the San Fransisco-based start-up had lured drivers with promises of earnings in six figures but was now slowly pulling the plug.

The group relented only after the police promised to bring company officials to talk to them.

The company - which has faced similar protests in Bangalore and Delhi, too - refused to respond to questions. A statement issued by it said: "We are in constant touch with our driver partners on the Uber platform and are always open to feedback and suggestions. We have been addressing their questions individually and will continue to do so...."

Hitesh Rakshit, a driver partner agitating outside the Uber office, said: "We were promised earnings of Rs 1 lakh to 1.2 lakh a month. We sold everything, begged and borrowed to buy a car and joined Uber. For a while, they kept their promise. But now they are withdrawing incentives and paying us peanuts. We are asking them to talk to us but they are unwilling to do so."

Association member Indranil Banerjee said a driver partner of Uber now earned Rs 12,000-Rs 14,000 a week.

The association members, who have 6,000 cars on the Uber platform, had asked the company for a meeting and were reportedly asked to visit the office today afternoon. "When we came, we found police here and no one was willing to meet us," Banerjee said.

The app cab aggregator is said to have been rolling back its driver incentive schemes over the past three months.

"Back in 2015, we used to make Rs 4,000 if we did 14 trips. After deducting Uber's commission and service tax totalling 24.5 per cent, we used to get around Rs 3,000 in hand. Today, they have withdrawn such trip-based packages, said Manab Das, a driver partner.

Now, a new system called "boost" has been introduced. The driver app shows an area demarcated by a red line where the demand is at its peak. If a driver picks up trips from such an area, he is given a boost or extra payment of 1.5X. "If the fare is Rs 100, Uber pays us Rs 150," Das said.

Boost also kicks in at certain times of the day - 5am-10am and 5pm-10 pm. Apart from that if a driver does 60 trips between Monday and Thursday, he gets a boost (extra) payment of Rs 3,000.