Karnataka is a great place to invest in: Uber GM

Amid major investment announcements for the ‘Invest Karnataka’ event that  started today, ministers and industrialists acknowledged that the growing traffic and increasing congestion were major deterrents in the development of the state.

David Plouffe, taxi aggregator and Uber’s board member, has stated that people in Karnataka recognize the role of technology in  solving human problems. Echoing Pouffe’s conviction, Mr. Bhavik Rathod, General Manager, Uber, spoke to Shadma Shaikh about Uber’s future plans for Karnataka, its role in decongestion and energy saving through the UberPool
feature and the launch of its engineering center in Bengaluru. Excerpts:

So what is Uber doing for the Invest Karnataka event?
Bengaluru is the first Indian city in which we started our operations and the response since then has been tremendous.

In the next five years, we plan to create 100,000 job opportunities in Karnataka.
We also plan to encourage more users to take up driving as a profession (if they wish to) and leverage a technology platform like Uber, to connect to riders.

With more adoptions on the rider’s side and with partner drivers making more money, our capacity to connect the riders with the drivers has grown.
The estimated time of arrival for a rider is three minutes.

Now, while that’s phenomenal for a rider, imagine how many more rides a driver can do when the time to connect him to a new rider is only three minutes! With that we believe we are going to create great economic opportunities in India in coming years.

At the inauguration, David Plouffe talked about most cars in the city ferrying 1.2 passengers. What solutions have you implemented for it?
Our aim has been to penetrate deeper into cities. Earlier last year, we launched cash as a mode of payment; we introduced UberGo as a cheaper alternative to travel. But mainly it’s our UberPool initiative.

If you look at Bangalore, it has only four arterial roads in the city- Mysore Road, Electronic city, Hosur Road and the Outer Ring Road, which means there are millions of cars going in the same direction and coming back, so why don’t we just combine them! 

He continued, “Car pooling is not a new concept. It’s been there for some time and we are doing just that at Uber, by matching riders with drivers in real-time, using technology".

Within just six months of launching UberPool, in Bengaluru, we have saved over 50,000 litres of fuel. We believe it’s had a huge impact.

Uber had also launched UberCommute that allows people who drive to work, to use Uber's technology to find commuters along their way, sharing the cost of their commute. How has Bengaluru responded to it?

Yes! Our first impression was that the early adopters would be the techies. That’s happened, but we’ve seen people going on photo shoots or corporate events every day, using UberCommute.

We have also seen senior citizens traveling the same route for 30 years, as they see this as an interesting alternative to driving alone. It’s been only five weeks, but the response has been great and we hope it grows as more people adopt it.