BENGALURU: Imagine reserving a seat in an air-conditioned bus on the Uber app for your daily commute. Ride-hailing app Uber is working on this on a pilot basis in Delhi.
Jayaram Valliyur, Senior Director - Engineering, Uber, told The New Indian Express 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, and 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 in a predictable and convenient fashion.
"Uber Bus is completely 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 completely 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 1000 engineers at its Bengaluru and Hyderabad centres, who work on different tech challenges including Uber Bus.
The app-based mobility and tech company plans to hire 500 engineers by the end of this year.
Uber Vice President and Head of Mobility Engineering, Praveen Neppalli Naga said India is a key market for Uber and we will continue investing here.
Its Hyderabad and Bengaluru centres handle critical functions for Uber such as Rider Engineering, Eats Engineering, Infra tech, Data, Maps and FinTech, among others.