Armed with fresh backing from Tata Capital (and Times Internet earlier), Uber’s India expansion is moving ahead with full force. Uber is launching its services in four more Indian cities — Guwahati, Nashik,
We’re thrilled to be growing so quickly in India, in fact over the last two months alone, we’ve doubled our footprint in India going from 11 cities in June to 22 cities today.
read the company’s official statement on its website.
To promote its expansion and to attract new users, Uber is also offering “three free rides of upto 200 INR each”, specially for its new users, a scheme it usually employs whenever it launches in a fresh city.
Uber, which began its operations in India in the mid 2013, now functions in 22 cities across the sub-continent. With this expansion Uber has turned towards the country that has become its largest geographic market after the United States, to further its profits.
Competing with the homegrown taxi aggregator Ola, Uber has managed to include a driver base of over 150,000 and reports a “40 percent month on month growth”, claiming to have snatched a ” significant market share in India of over 35 percent”.
While this expansion is critical to Uber’s core business, the US cab-hailing company has also been forging multiple partnerships, at a rapid pace across varying domains. The most recent of all, was the one with Airtel, wherein Uber incorporated Airtel’s Mobile Wallet app into its payment gateway.
Also, not to forget its strategic announcement to offer Airtel’s 4G services free in-cab, disappointingly limited to Mumbai but soon to expand to other cities it operates in. This free service was Uber’s counter measure to Ola’s Select Benefits program.
Uber, which is rumoured to go public early next year has managed to garner a sum of $10.84 billion from its global bookings.
