Uber will continue to invest aggressively in India as it believes that the success here will be vital to the company’s overall performance five to 10 years hence, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on Thursday.
Mr. Khosrowshahi, who is on his maiden visit to India, took over as the CEO after founder Travis Kalanick was asked to step down from the post amid regulatory problems and other controversies. “We consider that Indian market is part of our core. How we perform as a company 5-10 years from now is very much going to be determined by our success in India,” he said, during a fireside chat with NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant.
He added that the next step in India for the company was to “become more local,” which included ramping up hiring here. “A very important initiative that I am putting in place as the CEO is to increase the number of engineers that we have in India by 3-4x this year and multiples above that next year. I believe we need more engineering talent in India and talent is available. They are smart, they are driven, and they are entrepreneurial. And I want them to be building Uber service of the next generation,” he said.
While Uber started out as a cab-hailing company, it ultimately aims to “move from just moving people around to actually moving anything around.” The U.S.-based firm already offers its food delivery service Uber Eats.
Mr. Khosrowshahi added that car sharing was a very important next step for the company in India.
“We have a big business in India, but it is essentially a taxi-hailing company, it is not about car sharing. The next step for us to get our business to where we want it to be in India is to help move the regulations forward, so that we go from taxi-hailing to true car sharing. That will allow us to take cars off the road, reduce pollution and it will make much stronger use of assets that we have here.”
Uber is also “looking at India as an expansion opportunity” for its new Express Pool feature, which was recently rolled out in the U.S.
On the possibility of a merger with rival Ola, with whom Uber shares Softbank as an investor, Mr. Khosrowshahi said it was too early to say and his focus now was not on mergers and acquisitions but “investing in India.” “We will go aggressively and all out.” The Uber chief, who is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his two-day visit, called on Minister for State for Aviation Jayant Sinha on Thursday to “discuss airport partnerships and future of commercial air travel in the form of flying cars.”
On Uber ‘flying car’ project ‘Elevate’, he said, “ We are now actively working on the Uber Elevate project. I think that we will have vehicles that will be flying, in five years and commercial vehicles 10 years from now or sooner.”
U.S. immigration policy
On U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, Mr. Khosrowshahi said, “Immigration really made the U.S. what it is now as a leading nation.
The U.S. is an immigrant nation at the core…American dream is the greatest brand in the world that everybody in the world understands what it means. That American dream attracts the best and brightest.”
“I think it’s a short-sighted view and a bit of a reactionary view that our President has taken. I am hoping over time our country returns to its roots that is to welcome folks who want to come, welcome folks who want to work hard,” he said.
