Now, UberEATS to launch in Bengaluru; more cities within 1 year

Uber Technologies Inc, which piloted its food delivery service UberEATS in India earlier this year, is starting the service in Bengaluru, with plans to launch it across more cities over the next 6-12 months, a company executive said.

In an interview on Thursday, UberEATS head Bhavik Rathod indicated that the cab hailing company was backing its ability to compete strongly against established rivals in the food delivery space such as Swiggy and Zomato. “In under four months, we’re going to be live in three cities,” said Rathod, who was previously Uber’s regional general manager for south and west India and Sri Lanka.

In May, Uber launched UberEATS in Mumbai, followed by New Delhi. UberEATS, which is a separate app, was first piloted by Uber in Los Angeles in 2014, before being expanded to 100 cities in the world, including New York, Paris, Seattle, Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong.

“There are two reasons as to why we launched UberEATS in India. We looked at the market, which is a $15-20 billion market for food delivery and the demand for that is still unmet. A lot of it is still unorganised,” said Rathod. “The second reason is that our presence in the country is touching four years. We are present in 30 cities for our rides business, there are a lot of learnings that we’ve gathered on how people consume the application...and things like traffic patterns, etc.”

Uber has partnered with over 300 restaurants in Bengaluru.