Big role for tech team as Uber India builds products for global markets

They handle critical functions for Uber, such as rider engineering, Eats engineering, infra-tech, data, maps, Uber for Business and fintech

Ride-hailing giant Uber’s tech journey in India started in 2014 at a bungalow in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad. This has expanded over the years to a point where its tech centres in Hyderabad and Bengaluru are now its second-largest in the world, next only to its facilities in the US. The two centres handle critical functions for Uber, such as rider engineering, Eats engineering, infra-tech, data, maps, Uber for Business, fintech, customer obsession, and growth and marketing.

“The India tech centres are building products for the global markets,” says Praveen Neppalli Naga, vice-president and head of mobility engineering at Uber. Naga is based in San Francisco and was recently on a visit to India to reveal hiring plans for engineering talent and inaugurate a new office. “There are also products that have been built in India and have been scaled up to other countries as well.”

For instance, Uber’s India-based engineering team continues to help grow the delivery business globally, including scaling a business line that allows merchants to join Uber Eats while using their own delivery staff. A team of eight people from Uber’s Hyderabad Tech Centre, are the force behind this innovation. Today, it is a successful e2e (end-to-end) business catering to restaurants across 23 countries, including the UK, the US, Japan, Chile and Ecuador.


 

The feature offers flexibility to restaurant partners that prefer using their own delivery staff to deliver orders to still do so, while getting orders from the Uber Eats platform. On busy days, they may also choose to opt for Uber Eats courier partners to deliver orders to meet excess demand or to deliver to a wider geographic radius within a city. Similarly, Eaters get a more comprehensive list of eating options on their favourite food ordering app.

Naga says Uber’s delivery business got “turbocharged” during the pandemic. “We leveraged our engineers during that slump time to build some core technologies on the mobility side.”

Seeing value provided by talent in the country, Uber Technologies recently said it is planning to hire 500 more tech employees by December. The firm already has a 1,000-member tech team across its centres in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

Manikandan Thangarathnam, senior director of engineering at Uber, says that the firm is increasing the portfolio of programmes that it is offering to the customers. This will entail a big role for the tech team.

For instance, Uber’s India-based Global Scaled Solutions team is scaling the “Uber for Business” product globally, making return-to-office after two years seamless for organisations and employees. Supporting transport needs for working professionals across the globe, the product is translated in over 50 languages, leveraging emerging technologies such as machine translations, and natural language processing.

Key developments in Uber’s tech journey in India
 

2020: Team leads map updates across 150 global cities during the lockdown

Strengthens India Fintech presence with Uber Money Team.

Uber Eats’ Engineering team in India leads innovations in Japan, Belgium
 

2021: Team leads tech for prescription delivery in the US

Team develops restaurant storytelling feature

Team enables speedy payments to drivers for vaccine shots
 

2022: Tech team brings new delivery features to the world

Tech team in India simplifies return-to-work

Uber to hire 500 techies for its India tech centers by December

The technology is backed by linguistic horsepower to build a world-class experience for customers across regions. Uber’s Maps tech, editing, and diagnostics help in driving improvements to touchpoints such as improved routing, more accurate pickup and drop-off in office campuses, and more accurate ETAs (expected time of arrival).

The Hyderabad-based Uber Eats engineering team also led the integration of prescription delivery company NimbleRx’s backend onto the Eats platform to help launch one of the company’s latest products -- delivery of prescription medicines -- in parts of the US in late 2020.

The team completed the integration process in just three weeks, thereby allowing customers to order their prescription medication from neighbourhood pharmacies or transfer their existing prescription right from their Uber Eats app.

The partnership leveraged Uber Eats’ delivery expertise and ensures medicines reach residents in a timely manner, all at the tap of a button.  With Covid-19 vaccines in various stages of rollout across the US, delivery of medicines continued to be a crucial service, helping people stay protected indoors.

Last year, Uber’s Hyderabad-based Risk Intelligence team also enabled timely payments to driver-partners for getting vaccine shots. The payments were to compensate driver-partners for the time they spent getting inoculated. The team leveraged the in-house tool ‘Sherlock’ to scan through the vaccination certificates uploaded by driver-partners and verify credentials, followed by managing payouts to them.

The entire process of putting the system in place was completed within a week, ensuring that there was no lag in payments. The use of Sherlock meant that manual scanning of documents wasn’t needed, thereby saving crucial time.

Uber is also doubling down on its commitment to product innovation, including mission-critical work on high-occupancy vehicles and micro mobility. Multimodal and shared transport is a big part of the mandate being driven by the twin tech centers in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, with products -- including Uber Bus and micro mobility -- being developed in the country from the ground up. Uber’s multimodal transport model envisages travel within cities at the press of a button, without having to worry about booking the next leg of the journey at the next stop.

Thangarathnam of Uber says the opportunities are big in other modes of transportation. This is because ride sharing penetration is just 0.5 per cent in India and the firm aims to tap the rest of the space. “That makes it the biggest opportunity,” he adds.

Uber is already stepping up its bus service in India as the cab-hailing company expands into different modes of mobility. The Uber app will let customers book bus seats as the company works with private firms and state-run services to put their vehicles on its platform. The company is targeting the next 100 million customers who want a cheaper and comfortable public commute, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority will start an ‘Uber’ bus service that will run on a pilot basis for nine months. Uber is testing a new service that guarantees a seat to customers in air-conditioned buses in Delhi. Outside India, this is also being tested in Cairo, Egypt.

“Uber will play a very significant role in defining the disruption in the transportation industry,” says Thangarathnam. “That’s the mindset and mental model at which we are looking for the next 10 years.”