Uber plans to greatly increase the number of engineers it has in India, while doubling down on its vision of localised products like UberMoto, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has revealed during his first visit to India.
"Part of being more local, for me, means having local talent here building our product,” Khosrowshahi said at an event in New Delhi on Thursday.
"One of the very important initiatives that I'm putting forward as CEO is to increase the number of engineers that we have in India, by 3 or 4X this year, and multiples above that next year," he added. "I believe we need more engineering talent in India, the talent is there, they're smart, they're driven, they're entrepreneurial, and I want them building the service of the next generation."
Khosrowshahi was responding to questions about Uber's plans in India, and aside from bringing in more engineers here, the other issue that he repeatedly mentioned was how important it was for Uber to work with Indian regulators to allow owner-driven cars, and not just taxis, onto its fleet.
"What I would like to see in India, we have a big business in India, but it is essentially a taxi-hailing company. It's not about car sharing, and I think the next step for us to get our business to where we want it to be in India, is to move regulations forward so that we go from taxi hailing to true car sharing," said Khosrowshahi. "That will allow us to take traffic off the road, it will help with pollution, it will make much stronger use of the assets we have here."
"When you look at our service in most other markets across the world, what has really created value is when you get peer to...