BackUber to launch services in seven more Indian cities on Thursday
Uber is already present in 11 Indian cities and will now add Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Indore, Mysore, Nagpur, Surat and Visakhapatnam
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Bengaluru: Taxi-hailing service Uber will launch its services in seven more cities on 2 July, making India its largest market outside its base in the US.
Uber is already present in 11 Indian cities and will now add Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Indore, Mysore, Nagpur, Surat and Visakhapatnam. It will be largest simultaneous launch in new international cities, the company said.
In these cities, Uber will offer only its low-priced services Go and X. “The demand that we’ve seen in 3-4 of the new cities (through people logging on to the Uber app) is several times more than what we saw when we launched in Bombay," said Neeraj Singhal, head of expansion for India and the subcontinent, Uber.
“The rapid 40% month-on-month growth we continue to see in India is unprecedented and it is not surprising that some of the fastest growing cities in the world are also here. Our data already shows that residents and visitors in each of these new cities have been eagerly waiting for Uber for sometime now and we expect to see a similar response here," Singhal said.
Uber recently hired Rent.com’s Amit Jain to head its India operations in a bid to improve relations with regulators and catch up with local rival Ola, which operates in about 100 cities.
Uber also has a promo code for new users, and cautioned that due to limited availability, users might have to wait longer than usual to hail cab during its launch phase. The service, which was launched in India in August 2013, has faced multiple regulatory hurdles.
The Delhi high court banned all app-based cab-hailing services in the capital last December, after a woman had been allegedly raped by a driver contracted to Uber. On 12 June, the ban was set aside for Ola and Taxiforsure, but Uber’s petition is still pending.
Cab aggregators like Uber, which didn’t pay service tax earlier, may now have to do so, according to the government’s definition of ‘aggregator’. Uber is facing similar issues in South Korea, Germany and Thailand.
Uber also had to change its payment model and launched a payment wallet, after the Reserve Bank of India disallowed automatic payments made through credit cards.
Uber, which was founded in 2009 by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, is one of the fastest growing venture-backed private firms in the world. It is in talks to raise fresh funds at an estimated valuation of $50 billion, which would make it the world’s most valued start-up, according to several media reports.
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