Uber launches first engineering centre for Asia in Bengaluru

Uber has opened its first Asian engineering center in Bengaluru highlighting the focus on India to solve the localised challenges of Uber users in the country.

“India is increasingly becoming an important market for us and we need to have a center here to focus on more localised challenges,” said Uber CTO Thuan Pham. Uber engineering center currently has 8 engineers and plans to increase the head count to over 100 employees this year.

To focus on more India-specific challenges, the centre will build innovations around customer-centric issues and improve existing challenges, such as lower connectivity, congestion in the city and improving accuracy of routes and arrival time. Pointing out that cash as a mode of payment was introduced by the company in India after sensing the demand and it was later extended to other international cities, Pham said Uber hopes for other such innovations to come out of the engineering center in the city that could be applied across the globe. The centre, temporarily headed by Jaikumar Ganesh, is looking to hire more people in the near future, including a permanent India engineering head.

Cab major seeks to lure cabbies in Africa expansion plan US-based Uber plans to expand in Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana this year and will focus on convincing traditional taxi drivers to work for the ride-hailing service, Alon Lits, Uber's general manager for sub-Saharan Africa, said.

Traffic-clogged roads, high rates of urban crime and a lack of credit card are big challenges Uber faces in sub-Saharan Africa, where it operates in seven cities in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

But its biggest problem is the one it faces from Rome to Rio; the friction with traditional taxi drivers who see Uber as a threat to their livelihoods.

In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, Uber's fastest growing market in sub-Saharan Africa, an Uber driver was attacked and his car torched last month after the government rejected calls by Kenya's taxi association to ban the company.

“Part of our strategy when we launch in new markets will be that engagement up front with taxi operators,” Lits told Reuters in an interview in Nairobi. “We will be doing a better job of engaging.”

That strategy will involve convincing traditional taxi drivers to work for Uber, showing them they can continue working on their own, but when they don't have a fare they can also choose to use the Uber smartphone app to pick up passengers and make extra money.

Lits said Uber, which operates in more than 400 cities worldwide, will set up East and West Africa “hubs” in Nairobi and Lagos to act as launchpads for forays into Tanzania, Uganda and Ghana, and would begin operating in a second city each in Nigeria and Kenya.

“We feel we are at a point now where we have a strong sense for what it takes to build a successful Uber business in Africa,” Lits said.

Lits said Uber's experiment in Kenya to let riders pay fares with cash or via mobile money had boosted growth in Nairobi, where about 100,000 people open the Uber app once a month.