All battles lost, Uber plans to win India with money

San Francisco-headquartered ride-hailing company Uber, one of the major players in India, is in no mood to reduce the investment in the country and bear a fall in its growth graph.

It has once again repeated the claim. The company’s chief operating officer Barney Harford said that it has a clear position of strength in India. The company is continuously increasing levels of resources that it can invest in opportunity markets and India is right on top of that list.

The company is locked in a stiff battle with the local ride-hailing company Ola. The San Francisco-headquartered company doesn’t want to let its guard down and lose the battle against the company.

Uber is clocking more than 10 million rides every week in India, more than twice as many from a year ago, according to a Mint report.

Recently, the International cab-hailing major clocked a profit of $2.5 billion, from merging its businesses in Russia and Southeast Asia with local competitors, and announced to channelise profits into the Indian market.

India is now the last major market for the San Francisco-based platform after losing the battle against local players in China, Brazil and the other Southeast Asian markets.

Besides, Ola has opened the battle on many fronts against the rival Uber. The Indian cab-hailing major is giving competition to Uber in Australia and set to launch in Sri Lanka.

Amidst the close competition between Uber and Ola, where both are burning millions of dollars to remain relevant in India, a common investor SoftBank initiated merger talks between both the companies in March this year.

According to media reports, SoftBank was in favour of Ola acquiring the Indian unit of Uber.

On the speculation of merger talks, Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi later clarified that the ride-hailing firm would like to control its destiny in the country rather than the other way round.