India fastest growing market for Uber Eats globally: Uber

New Delhi: US-based Uber Thursday said India is the fastest growing market for its food delivery platform Uber Eats and the service is being rapidly expanded to cover more Indian cities.

Uber had launched Uber Eats in India in May last year and today expanded the service to five more Indian cities -- Tiruchirappalli, Surat, Nashik, Ludhiana and Mysore -- to now cover 28 cities.

"India continues to be the fastest growing market for Uber Eats in the Asia Pacific region and globally. "As urbanisation picks up in the country, we look for opportunities to take our service to newer cities and expand our network, especially in tier II cities, which we believe, offer tremendous potential for the food tech industry," Head of Uber Eats India Bhavik Rathod said in a statement.

While the company did not disclose specific numbers, it said the number of orders on its platform has "more than quadrupled" in the last three months and recorded nearly 50 per cent month-on-month growth.

Interestingly, Vijayawada and Madurai were the first two cities where Uber Eats was launched before the rides service. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi had recently said the company is "deliberately investing" in products like Uber Eats and "high-potential" markets in the Middle East and India, even though its losses widened year-on-year in the June 2018 quarter.

Globally, the Uber Eats business is growing 200 per cent per year and has a USD 6 billion run rate. Uber Eats was started in 2014 as a small delivery pilot in Los Angeles and was later launched as a separate mobile app in Toronto in December 2015. In India, Uber Eats competes with the likes of Zomato and Swiggy as well as FoodPanda, which is owned by Uber's rival, Ola.