At a time when ride-hailing services are seeing a huge plunge in demand as social distancing has become the new norm and several businesses turned to work-from-home due to COVID-19, transportation network company Lyft Inc saw more than 60% increase in influencer conversations on Twitter between March and August 2020 over the previous six months, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

An analysis of GlobalData’s Lyft Influencer Platform reveals a major conversation spike in August, when California court paused an ongoing case that was filed in May against Lyft for not considering its gig workers as employees, but later permitted the company to continue its ride-hailing operations in the California region. This also led to a 10% increase in Lyft’s share price in August 20.

Another spike was noticed in August, when the company reported 75% surge in its riders’ demand in July over April 2020. According to GlobalData’s Jobs Database, there is 100% surge in job postings from company in July over May, indicating hiring spree in the organization on the rise of rider’s demand.

Prashant Saxena, Influencer Expert at GlobalData, says: “Ride-hailing industry has suffered huge revenue loss due to significant drop in ridership as many countries worldwide went for lockdown during the pandemic. Though, Lyft’s first-quarter results did not reflect any major impact of pandemic on its revenues, but from the second-quarter results it is evident that the company requires quick measures to preserve the strength of its balance sheet.”

In June, the company’s CEO pledged to reach 100% electric vehicles on its platform by 2030 that leads to a bigger step to help its drivers transition to electric vehicles.

Another conversation spike was noticed in May, when the company reported year-on-year 23% rise in its Q1 2020 revenue. In spite of this increase, the company announced employee lay-offs and pay cuts to stabilize its performance in the upcoming quarters. GlobalData’s Jobs Database reveals that the company’s job postings declined significantly in April with 61 posts in comparison to 538 in February.

Mr Saxena concludes: “To avoid the COVID-19 impact, Lyft announced new offerings on its platform such as ‘Wait and Save rides’ for requisite trips and launched essential deliveries pilot to manage delivery services. With these efforts, coupled with recovery in riders’ demand for cab services after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, it is expected that company can manage to uplift its business performance in the coming months.”