Uber looks to conquer India
NANDINI Balasubramanya’s office on the southern edge of India’s technology capital does not look as if it would play a key role in the world’s most valuable startup’s plans for global conquest.
On many days, the tiny space has no electricity. So Balasubramanya keeps the door open, the noise and dust of Bangalore’s traffic-choked streets streaming in. On one wall is a large menu of the documents she asks of each applicant – driver’s licence, proof of insurance, vehicle registration permit, proof of bank account, and other chits to pass through India’s bureaucracy.
There is also a framed photograph of a smiling Travis Kalanick, CEO of the US ridehailing company, Uber.
Balasubramanya, 32, does not work for Uber, though. She is an “UberDost” or “friend of Uber”, an independent recruiter paid by the company for each driver she brings on. The work is rewarding but often difficult, she said.
Balasubramanya has trained people who have never worked before, and those with little experience managing money or interacting with middle-class customers. Many also don’t know how to use a smartphone app or they struggle with basic map reading.
“I show them how to use Uber, teach them about how to use navigation, or how to use a phone,” Balasubramanya said.
Balasubramanya’s is just one of hundreds of UberDost offices that Uber has set up across India, where the ride-hailing company now operates like a military division bent on subcontinental conquest. After last year’s bruising retreat from China, where the company was outgunned by local incumbent Didi Chuxing, Uber is diving fully into this nation of 1.3 billion people, pouring money, engineers and logistical expertise into dominating what could one day be the world’s largest market for transportation services.
India is also where Uber’s vision of itself as a lean software company has come crashing into the sobering realities of analogue life in a developing country. Its aim of blanketing the world in hailable cars remains complex and daunting.
“The way to think about it is that India is a super-important place in the world that has huge cities, with huge transportation needs, that we want to serve,” Kalanick said in an interview. “We want to be there, and want to be there in a big way.”
That interview, in which Kalanick was by turns combative and charming, took place in mid-January, just before Uber descended into a sustained series of corporate crises. The company is dealing with a sexual-harassment scandal and greater scrutiny of its freewheeling culture.
The troubles have cast a shadow over any plans the privately held company, which is valued at nearly $70 billion, might have had to launch a public stock offering.
Uber, which hung up a sign in India in 2013, operates in 29 cities, including some of the most congested on the globe. Throughout the country, the roads tend to be terrible; clogged with traffic, potholes and pedestrians, marked by ever-shifting routes and a freewheeling interpretation of automotive rules.
It’s not just the roads. India’s cellular networks can be spotty, and banking, credit cards and other financial mainstays cannot be taken for granted. More than that, vast differences in education and wealth create a social dynamic between riders and drivers that cannot be smoothed over by improving an app interface.
Many of Uber’s drivers here are unfamiliar with smartphones, some are illiterate. Often, drivers and riders don’t speak the same language.
And then there is competition. Uber faces a well-funded Indian rival, Ola Cabs, which operates in 100 cities.
Both Uber and Ola say that the long-term payoff for their efforts in India could be transformative. Ride sharing is changing Indian urban life; getting around cities has become cheaper and safer, especially for women. It is also altering life for hundreds of thousands of drivers, many of whom are drawn from India’s poorest ranks.
Yet Uber’s quest towards remaking transportation in India, which the company sees as a template for other developing nations, is bound to be long, expensive and complicated.
“We are not profitable in any of the cities we’re in now,” Amit Jain, president of Uber India, said. “We have a path to get there, and we are confident we will.”