Uber’s marketing and support services entity in India, Uber India Systems, has reported a 10 per cent increase in revenue from Rs 374 crore in FY16 to Rs 410 crore in the fiscal year 2016-2017. Comparing this to its previous growth figure of 442 per cent from Rs 69 crore in FY15, this is a rather slow growth.
Similarly, the profit reported by the company of Rs 30 crore in FY17 is again a small 4 per cent increase from the previous year’s Rs 28.8 crore number. Meanwhile, the total expenses of the company for the financial year ending Mar 2017 was Rs 380 crore, out of which Rs 95.5 crore was attributed to employee benefit expenses.
On the contrary, Uber India’s arch-rival Ola had reported a 70 per cent surge in revenue for the financial year 2016-2017, going from Rs 758.23 crore in FY16 to Rs 1286 crore.
Over the years, both the ride-hailing firms have been engaged in a fierce battle to gain more control of the Indian market. The Bhavish Aggarwal-led company has been able to maintain a sizeable lead over Uber.
Uber has recently emphasised that it’s continuously increasing levels of resources in India to up its ante against the local rival. Of late, Uber claims to clock more than 10 million rides every week in India, more than twice the number claimed a year ago.
Notably, Uber had promoted Amit Jain as the head of Asia-Pacific region. Previously, he was the President of Uber India, a position now held by Pradeep Parameswaran.
A couple of months ago, several media reports surfaced in which SoftBank was reportedly attempting to merge both companies. However, several statements and moves by Uber made it evident that the US-based car aggregator has no such plans.
Recently, Uber, Inc. had reported a profit of $2.5 billion recently, from merging its businesses in Russia and Southeast Asia with local competitors, and announced to channelise profits into the Indian market.
The development was first reported by Business Standard.
