Uber says no plans to improve mobility business

Worldwide, the food delivery business for Uber is bigger than the mobility business. You have no game in that market of India. Add to this the fact that your average ticket sizes are much smaller than in markets such as the US and UK. What is your strategy to strengthen India’s business?

India is a huge and under-penetrated market for ride-hailing, with only 0.5% of the population using the service. We are committed to our success here and will build on for many decades from this point. We are in it to win it for the long haul. For a large part of our history in the Indian market, we were only in the car-sailing business, which means we could only serve a small segment of the market. Not everyone in India travels in air-conditioned cars. In fact, majority of Indians travel by buses, three wheelers and two wheelers, and hence, realizing how important India is to us, we have started diversifying these categories. By lowering the price through these segments, we open up the addressable market to a larger segment of the population. And so, we see that it’s really a coherent strategy. We want to serve a large part of India. Now that we have a more diversified product portfolio, we are expanding to more cities as well. I don’t think the lack of delivery business is impacting our mobility business in any way. We have a fast-paced strategy within the mobility segment. We are working on multiple price points from $1-20. We are building a value ladder focused on building viable, sustainable businesses on each of these.

Can you tell us about the timing of Uber selling its stake in Zomato? Did this indicate any first step or direction towards closing your India business?

I can tell you clearly and unequivocally that we have never explored an exit from India and are busy building the next decade. We recently sold our stake in Zomato – but the sale of stake in Zomato has not impacted our mobility business. We are a global company with various investments, and we look to monetize our stake in companies from time to time. We at Zomato did not sit on the board. It was a minority investment for us. In the mobility business itself, we continue to double up, especially in categories that are India-first, such as rental, inter-city and high-capacity vehicles. We are putting a lot of resources around this business. On the supply side, we have encouraged EMEA and our largest fleet partners in Africa – a leading mobility fintech – and brought them to launch a rent-to-own model where they are now willing to add thousands of new vehicles to the platform. to encourage drivers to join Uber. We see opportunities across the board, and exiting is not a conversation we’ve had. We also don’t see how transferring our business to another entity would have any merit.

National and state-level regulatory guidelines have created an EV transition timeline for commercial fleet aggregators. Are you equipped to meet the goals?

We are in talks with several regulators. The FAME-II subsidy actually led to widespread private ownership of electric vehicles. It will be important to reduce the upfront cost of acquisition through more accessible and viable financing schemes. Secondly, the OEM has to build a certain range of vehicles that can be deployed as cabs. Some major OEMs still haven’t come up with mass market EVs.

Currently, out of 600,000 drivers on our platform, 5,000 are EVs. So, we are still at a very early stage. Uber has committed to complete electrification globally by 2040.

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