Uber to Make India Its ‘Laboratory of the World’; To Incubate Startups

For the driving next set of growth and keeping more focus on the India emerging market, Uber is now considering the country as the hub for its global research and development. On a larger role, the ride-hailing firm will now incubate the startups that will help in solving the mobility and transport issue.

As of now in the market, Uber has ten centers across the globe and India represents the whole Asia region. The development comes on the lines of the company doubling down the engineering team I India that may also go up to 1000 techies across the functions which include the data scientist, AI/ML and product design experts.

According to the head of Engineering of Uber, Apurva Dalal, Uber India, the R&D Center will be the laboratory to solve some of the global as well as all the emerging markets problems according to the report which has been revealed.

This is a great move from the company which had also kicked off its dedicated R&D in India back in the year 2016. With the R&D centers in the Hyderabad and Bangalore, India arguably has the largest technology innovative presence for the Uber outside of the US market.

Uber India unit had also recently clocked an annualized gross booking rate of $1.64 Billion in the third quarter and counts for the 11 percent of the ride-hailing major global operations across the globe.

Apart from that, the R&D centers are developing features like the ‘Call to ride’  for the elderly people and ‘Dost’ app for the community among the drivers.

The company rival Ola had also launched Ola mobility institute. The company police research and the social innovation platform will help the companies to develop the tools to ease the burden of the mobility on the citizens.