Uber has announced the elevation of former head of company’s India and South Asia operations, Pradeep Parameswaran to the regional general manager of its Asia Pacific region operations.
Parameswaran will now have a greater role in the company as he will now lead Uber in 9 countries namely India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. He will take on this new role starting next week.
“After capably leading our India and South Asia business since 2018, I know that he will continue to inspire Uber’s next phase of growth across this key region,” said Andrew Macdonald, Uber’s Senior Vice President of mobility and business operations in a statement.
Parameswaran’s Uber journey has been pretty exceptional so far, if numbers are anything to go by. When he was the manager of India and Southeast Asia operations in 2019, Uber handled 14 million rides each week. Under his supervision, Uber India’s profit increased exceptionally by 63%
“There is huge potential to serve more Uber customers and continue innovating across the diverse region, whether that be taxi partnerships in North Asia, new products like Uber Rent in Australia or pushing two and three-wheelers deep into the Indian heartland,” said Parameswaran in a statement.
However, he will not be handling the Uber Eats operation in India as that business ceases to exit. Owing to increasing losses and no clear road to profitability (unlike rest of the world), Uber merged its Eats business in India with Zomato in 2019.
Uber followed a similar process with its former India lead – Amit Jain, who currently works with Sequoia. Uber appointed Amit Jain as its India head and later promoted him to run the Asia Pacific business.
Parameswaran’s larger role comes at a time when ride-hailing businesses across the world have been hit hard by the COVID pandemic. Globally, Uber’s rides have gone down by 80%, showing some signs of recovery in the month of May.
