Taxi hailing firm Uber on Friday announced plans to invest $1 billion in India to expand footprint in the country amid growing competition in the segment.
The investment, Uber India President Amit Jain said, would help the U.S.-based company expand into newer cities, improve operations, develop new products as well as payment solutions.
“Uber has grown exponentially in India, a global priority market for us, which has also quickly become the largest market geographically for Uber outside the U.S.,” Mr. Jain said, adding the company was seeing 40 per cent growth month-on-month, which is likely to go up post the investment.
Its biggest competitor in the market Ola have till now raised about $700 million, including $400 million Series E funding received in April. According to some reports, the firm plans to raise another $500 million. Ola has operations in about 100 cities and claims to offer over 7.5 lakh rides a day.
10 lakh trips a dayMeanwhile, Mr. Jain said with this investment, the company was expecting to hit over 10 lakh trips a day in the next six to nine months.
The app-based ride hailing firms are seeing good growth in India even though they have been, for past few months, embroiled in controversies over security and not compiling with guidelines for Radio Taxis. While Uber was banned in New Delhi last December after one of its drivers was accused of raping a passenger, later a ban was put on the operation of app-based cab services, which did not comply with the guidelines of Radio Taxi Scheme of 2006.
The companies, however, continued to operate despite the ban.
