NEW DELHI: The main Indian unit of taxi aggregator Uber has posted a four-fold jump in revenues in its third year of operations in the country that has already become San Francisco-headquartered taxi aggregator’s largest market outside the US. Uber India Systems, which provides marketing and support services to Uber, posted a 442% jump in its revenues for the year ended March 2016 at `374 crore against `69 crore in the previous year, according to its filing at the registrar of companies (RoC).
The rapid growth is in line with the massive investments Uber has been making in India over the last two years. While the company has not filed latest profit numbers in its annual return, it has been profitable in the two years after inception. Uber did not comment on financial numbers.
The firm’s cofounder Travis Kalanick, in a visit to India in January, had said it could double its pledged investment of $1billion if it sees more than five times the return. Uber India, which operates in around 30 cities, had doubled the number of locations it operates in the last financial year. It, however, has added only 6-7 more locations so far this calendar as it focuses more on expanding in existing locations.
In a recent interview to ET, Amit Jain, Uber president for South Asia and India, said it is unlikely Uber will expand massively beyond 29 Indian cities it is present in. Its main competitor, Ola, is present in 100-plus cities and has plans to go deeper. Jain said Uber currently accounts for only about 1% of the total rides in the cities where it has operations with a bulk of the business coming from the top ten cities.
