Uber India’s head of business development, Mahesh Bhalla has called it quits at the Indian division of world’s most valued tech startup. Coming up in a report from ET, This news comes after just four months of his joining the cab-hailing service providing company.
While many executives have quit startups after working for a very short time, this is the first big exit from Uber, the most-valued startup in the world who recently started building its corporate team in India. It appears that Mahesh quit Uber in the month of August.
Mahesh Bhalla joined Uber in May 2016, after his stint at QwikCilver, a gift card solutions company. At QwikCilver, he had worked as president for nearly two years. Prior to that, he was a part of Dell and Samsung.
In over a decade long stint at Dell, he was the executive director of Dell’s consumer and small & medium business in India, where he was also the architect of its consumer strategy.
Contrary to what Uber is known for, India is one of the first markets for Uber globally, where the company has appointed a country head. It roped in Amit Jain last year as the country head for India. Since then, it has started building a local team.
Uber has been known for its lean global expansion, with teams of just 3-4 executives in each country. Given that India is one of the largest market for the company, it committed to invest around $1 billion for India operations. As per company’s founder Travis Kalanick, India could surpass either U.S. or China.
Uber has been introducing new features and expanding its partnership portfolio in order to get more market share in India. It recently introduced a feature in India that allows users to book a cab directly from the browser without the need for an app. Users can log on to dial.uber.com, book a cab, and pay by cash.
The feature is specifically targeted for Tier II cities, and will undoubtedly help in acquiring new customers as well as make the process easier for existing users.
Along with Mahesh Bhalla, the company had also hired two other executives in order to strengthen its business, engineering, and communication verticals. Apurva Dalal, former CTO at online furniture retailer Urban Ladder, joined as the Head of India Engineering and is currently building a team in Bangalore.
