Spread across three cities with a daily average of 15 million rides, Uber India holds 5.5 million monthly active users. It’s a remarkable statistic which Komal Mangtani looks upon with pride. She’s about four years into her tenure at the cab-hailing MNC and, at her tech talk at Hyderabad’s Uber offices in Whitefields, she surprises everyone when she sheepishly shares, “I failed my first driver’s test.” But she’s come a long way since then.
Komal’s early fascination with coding and engineering was heavily nurtured by her extensive education. Drawn to the practical problem-solving side of engineering as well as the continual introduction of emerging technologies, she is now part of an intricate behind-the-scenes workforce as Head of Engineering for Business Intelligence.
So what is business intelligence? In laymen’s terms, it involves the analysis of data — from past rides and experiences — to ensure each and every forthcoming ride is seamless from request to payment. 2018 was the year Uber was thrust into the spotlight, for both good and not-so-good reasons — be it safety, app performances or general interactions between driver and passenger.
In hindsight for the future
In 2017, Uber Eats made its way into the game — but only last year did it truly pick up, competing with Zomato and Swiggy. On a platform level, Komal observes there’s been a great deal of upgrades to the user experience from fraud detection services to payment security. “My teams here in Hyderabad have come up with deep learning techniques from smart menu recognition to restaurant additions,” she recalls, “Earlier, I was given a demo on if these systems discern that ‘tava’ and ‘tawa’ are the same things. It was really fascinating.”
While Komal didn’t start #LadyEng, dubbed as her ‘fun thing’ it is Uber’s internal social network for women to exchange experiences and perspectives on the industry. There are two distinct missions in mind with this body.
One is the professional development and aggrandisement of all female engineers at Uber, while the second is focussed on fair recruiting — how Uber makes the hiring experience best for women engineers and how they ensure an unbiased interview process and source diverse candidates.
In 2019, Komal explains that Uber wants to gain a better understanding of the user and technology, while propelling this, isn’t what this is about given the ride experience is interpersonal. She adds Uber Eats offers a good space for women looking to earn a little extra cash. “In terms of safety, I do see potential for women to work at Uber Eats for sure because of the different dynamic. You are not dealing with someone you don’t know.”
In fact, India has a growing number of female delivery partners and they come with the reference from family members who work as drivers. One such example includes an Ahmedabad-based driver’s two college-going daughters who use their bikes for Uber Eats runs. Another story is of Chennai-based trans-woman Preethisha who’s been doing the Uber Eats rounds as well.
Given the licensing for Uber Eats is a lot simpler and doesn’t require drawn-out vehicle registration, the experience has been an easy and extremely safe.
The advent of social media meant every poor ride experience was tweeted or made into a Facebook post which inevitably made its way into mainstream media.
To add to some excitement, at CES 2019, Uber announced that they’ll be introducing flying cars in three cities within the next three years as part of their ‘elevate aviation’ initiative. Futurism much? While it’s unrealistic to imagine India’s infrastructure allowing for such a venture, it shows how the company is always striving to up the urban mobility game, but, of course, not without its hitches.
