Uber Inaugurates Asia's First Engineering Centre In Bengaluru

In peak hours, Bengaluru is the slowest city in India. This is what technology company Uber is trying to address - mobilise commuters better by seamlessly connecting riders and drivers at the push of a button. In a step towards "fixing India problems", Uber on Thursday inaugurated its engineering centre in Bengaluru which is the first in Asia for the company.

With this engineering centre, Uber aims to deliver world-class experience from India, Thuan Pham, CTO, Uber Inc. said. "The talent we see in India and the sheer passion and eagerness of these engineers to build world-class products and services to improve the lives of people and cities around the world is remarkable."

Uber is looking to hire software engineers in Bengaluru across various levels who will work closely with the rest of the team in San Francisco.

"The engineering centre will hire the best-in-class software engineers who will focus on developing customised solutions to better serve our rider and driver partners in India, in collaboration with on-the-ground operations team as well as global engineering and product teams," Uber said in a statement.

Uber currently employs around 1,000 engineers across nine engineering centres globally including three in the US.

In terms of localisation, Uber had piloted solutions like cash on delivery as a payment option in India. Pham said many of these solutions can later be extended to other countries as well. For instance, cash payments have been replicated in other International geographies like Vietnam and Nairobi.

Pham said Internet connectivity, traffic congestion, and accuracy of routing are some of the biggest challenges faced by the company. "We are working to make our ETAs (Estimated Time of Arrival) better," he said.

Most recently, Uber was in the news for launching bike services, for which the Karnataka Government has reportedly sent the company a notice terming it as illegal as the company have not secured the license to operate the service. Uber spokespeople at the event declined to give any specific response on the status of this. The two-wheeler option known as uberMOTO still exists on the app.