Behaviour Shaping of Suspended Captains
21%
Conversion of Suspended Captains
57%
Captains with Improved Performance
2.8x
of Initial Expected Adoption
Context & Overview
About Rapido Captain App
The Rapido Captain App is the driver’s app for Rapido which enables professional drivers/captains to accept ride requests, navigate to riders/customers, complete trips and track earnings.
DAPR & How Suspensions Work
DAPR - Drop to Accepted Ping Ratio is a key metric which addresses the number of completed rides after captains accept ride requests. To improve the DAPR metric, a captain needs to reduce the number of cancellations after acceptance of rides.
The DAPR Formula:
Number of dropped rides (completed rides)
Last 10 Accepted Rides
X
100
For eg., here DAPR = 80
8
10
X
100
=
80
If the DAPR is too low for a Captain, and falls under Bad Category, the Captains can get temporarily suspended from the App, as a corrective measure.
UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM
The Issues with Suspension
Many Captains get temporarily suspended for minor offences such as low wallet balance or bad DAPR.
Instead of waiting for the suspension period to end, many captains:
Moved to Competitors
Captains switched to competing platforms to continue earning instead of waiting for their suspension to end.
Stopped Working
Some captains stopped doing bike taxi or delivery work altogether, leading to lost income and reduced platform activity.
Requested Reactivation
Captains reached out to customer support, requesting their accounts be reactivated so they could start earning again.
The Captain's Pain Point
Suspensions, even though short-term, disrupted captains' earning opportunities, creating a direct impact on their livelihood.
The Gap
We realised that we have - no structured path for the Captains to -
1
Understand what went wrong
2
Take Accountibility
3
Earn Their Way back to the platform
My Role
Led the initiative end-to-end, starting with the idea, driving user research, product strategy, and stakeholder alignment.
Conducted field research, synthesized insights, and reframed the problem to uncover high-impact opportunities and influence product direction.
Influenced the team to shift from a feature-first mindset to an ecosystem-led solution with greater long-term impact.
Structured a phased rollout roadmap to mitigate execution risk and accelerate learning.
Drove the ideation, systems thinking, and core experience design, partnering with product interns while leading the majority of concept development and design execution.
THE IDEA
The Assure Flow
The Assure Flow is a process that allows Rapido Captains to start doing food deliveries. To join, Captains pay a refundable ₹200 deposit, which is returned after they complete 30 deliveries.
This deposit acts as a commitment from the Captain. Since they have invested their own money, they are more likely to take deliveries seriously, complete orders, and avoid cancellations. As a result, Captains who go through the Assure Flow tend to be more reliable and accountable.
Key Insight
When Captains invest their own money,
they become more committed to delivering quality service and completing orders successfully.
Our Experiment
Taking inspiration from the Assure Flow, we launched the Reset Me experiment to test whether suspended Captains would demonstrate improved behaviour if given a structured second chance instead of a permanent suspension.
The experiment tested two hypotheses:
Suspended Captains would be willing to pay a refundable ₹200 deposit to regain platform access, creating a sense of investment and accountability.
Resetting their performance metrics and treating them as first-time users would help them shed the baggage of past performance and encourage better behaviour going forward.
The broader goal was to evaluate whether a rehabilitation-based model could serve as a scalable alternative to permanent suspensions, helping retain supply while improving platform reliability.
EXPERIMENT Rollout Plan & Execution
Who We Tested
We identified 953 long-term Captains (1–3 years on platform) who were recently suspended. These were experienced, Bike-affine Captains (>80% Bike rides historically) operating on the Link service in Delhi (465) and Hyderabad (488).
Delhi
465
Hyderabad
488
Total Captains
953
Cohort Target Profile
Experience Level: 1–3 years on platform (long-term Captains)
Status: Recently suspended
Ride Affinity: Bike-focused (>80% historical Bike rides)
Service Type: Link
Geographic Focus: Delhi & Hyderabad
The Deposit Mechanism
Step 1
Recharge
Recharge ₹200 to wallet.
Enter as a first-time user again.
Step 2
Perform
Improve performance for 30 days. Reduce cancellations.
Step 3
Benefit
Receive ₹200 refund upon successful completion.
How We Reached Them
We used a multi-channel communication approach to ensure Captains understood the opportunity.
The Pitch Centre banner explained the deposit-refund construct; push notifications provided
step-by-step recharge instructions, and Customer Support calling offered personalised support and clarifications.
DESIGN
The Ingress Point
Behaviour Tracking - Performance
The Reward
THE IMPACT
Real Results.
Real Impact.
Out of 953 suspended Captains, 200 recharged to regain access.
This represents a 21% conversion rate among suspended Captains willing to pay a refundable deposit
45
45
%
Showed Clear Improvement
in Performance
94 out of 164 Captains demonstrated clear DAPR
improvement after being reset. This validated our second hypothesis—resetting performance metrics
helped Captains shed past baggage.
0.0x
0.0x
achieved our initial expected adoption
The Reset Me experiment demonstrated that a rehabilitation-based approach can work for
suspended supply.
Strong Behaviour Correction
12
12
Captains
Moved Directly to High Performance Group (>80)
Only 17% (28 Captains) remained in Low DAPR despite being given a clean slate to improve.
26% hadn't accepted enough rides for evaluation
SOURAV DAS
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