Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi takes a bus ride during his India visit | Company News – Business Standard

On the first day of his India visit, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explored the Uber Shuttle in Bengaluru along with members of the Uber tech team that is building the product for India and the world. Uber Shuttle adds to the existing array of mobility options in India. These range from cars to two-wheelers, and three-wheelers, and form a part of the company’s multi-modal strategy. Uber’s tech team has integrated tech-enabled features with Shuttle similar to the other products available on the Uber app.

“This is the best time for Uber in India and I am so proud of the team here,” Khosrowshahi told Infosys co-founder and Aadhaar architect Nandan Nilekani, during a fireside chat event on Thursday. “We are building high-capacity vehicles like Uber bus that work for longer distances.”

Late last year, Uber announced a partnership with the State Transport Department in Kolkata to launch a B2C ‘Uber Shuttle’ service in March 2024. Air-conditioned buses plying on predefined routes will give commuters an option to pre-book seats up to a week in advance. They can follow the live location and route of the bus, and know its expected time of arrival. Other features of the service include cashless payments and access to a 24X7 Safety Line. Uber also plans to expand this service to Delhi and Hyderabad too. Uber had launched its B2B offering, ‘Uber Corporate Shuttle’ in 2021.

Uber’s India tech story started in 2014 from a bungalow in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad. Here a handful of driven engineers ideated about what the future of technology in the transportation industry would look like over the next decade and beyond. The teams and the company’s tech presence have since grown to two massive tech centres in the country – one in Hyderabad and another in Bengaluru.

As an example to show how vital India’s tech centres are for Uber, the fintech teams here have developed systems to track and manage every single dollar coming into the platform across the globe. The product engineering teams based out of Bengaluru designed tech for vital products such as Uber Bus, micro-mobility, Uber Rent, and Uber Lite from scratch. The Global Scaled Solutions team based out of Hyderabad leads scaling operations for every product and service Uber rolls out across thousands of cities the ridesharing company is present in.

Last year the company said that Uber Eats’ consumers in the United States can use their Amazon Echo devices to track the status of their orders. This was made possible by the ride-hailing firm Uber’s Eats Engineering team, based out of Hyderabad.

More than ten years ago, the first Indian rider hailed an Uber on the streets of Bengaluru, beginning a journey that quickly made the app a leading platform for riders and drivers alike. Since then, Uber has transformed India’s mobility landscape. The service now offers options like car, auto, moto, and bus rides via the app, available in 125 cities across India.

First Published: Feb 23 2024 | 12:21 AM IST