BENGALURU: Imagine reserving an air-conditioned bus seat on Uber app for your daily commute just like booking a cab. Ride-hailing app Uber is working on this bus service on a pilot basis in Delhi. Jayaram Valliyur, Senior Director - Engineering, Uber, told TNIE on the sidelines of an event in Bengaluru that,“There are a bunch of things that we are experimenting to say what is the right experience for that.
We have some initial hypotheses based on the understanding. You can arrive at a certain point, step into an air-conditioned bus, it will tell you when to drop-off and you can have a convenient ride. We are also looking at various options to scale it further.”
Uber launched this bus service in the B2B space, and now the pilot is for B2C (business-to-consumer). Apart from Delhi, Uber is piloting this feature in Cairo, Egypt. It is targeting the next 100 million customers who want to spend less, but want to drive in a safe manner- both predictable and in a convenient fashion. “Uber Bus is different. Where will the bus stop and at what time should the bus depart, at what speed the driver should drive to reach and leave the station on time.
There are new challenges and we are addressing a new segment of customers. We are getting a lot of interesting data and information regarding this,” said Manikandan Thangarathnam, Senior Director - Engineering, Uber. Uber, which has the second-largest tech centre in India after the US, employs nearly 1,000 engineers in its Bengaluru and Hyderabad centres, who work on different tech challenges including Uber Bus.