Kamal Ghorui
MUMBAI: Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is on a week-long visit to India, firming up the ride-hailing company’s strategic investment plans for the country amid stiff competition from local startup Rapido which is fast gaining market share and already understood to have raced past Uber and Ola in terms of monthly active users between January and February this year. On Monday and Tuesday, Khosrowshahi met a host of ministers in Delhi, including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu and consumer affairs minister Pralhad Joshi, holding discussions on Uber’s operations and mobility initiatives in the country, besides briefing ministers on the firm’s future roadmap in the market Khosrowshahi had earlier described as one of the toughest. “At the onset, it was strongly insisted that Uber India create an ecosystem where their existing fleet would transition towards EV,” minister Joshi said in a post on X, adding that Uber was also directed to submit self-auditing report on existence of dark patterns and action taken report on such patterns at the earliest. Khosrowshahi will also visit Mumbai and head to Uber’s tech centres in Bengaluru and Hyderabad later this week, said people in the know. A spokesperson for Uber India declined to comment on the details. The CEO said that the number of earners (drivers) on Uber’s platform in India has quadrupled since 2022. Khosrowshahi’s visit comes days after Walmart CEO John Furner’s trip to the country.
