Uber restructures business; India now integrated with European region

The move of integrating the two regions under a single leadership is primarily meant to bring in more synergies in the ridership business.

Business Standard : In a major restructuring in India, the rides business of Uber India will now report to Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty who as vice president currently heads the car hailing company's Europe, middle east and Africa business from Amsterdam. At present, the India rides business reports to Asia Pacific region, headquartered in Singapore.

Coty will now have an integrated portfolio of regions to oversee. It includes Uber’s Asia Pacific ride business which has India and south Asia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia, apart from his existing responsibilities. Amit Jain who earlier started the rides business in India and headed Uber India’s operations before moving up to become the head of the Asia Pacific business has decided to quit the company. With this move the Asia Pacific rides business will be integrated with Coty’s existing portfolio. Explaining the changes at a time when the company has filed for an IPO Barney Harford, COO, Uber says:

“After four great years, Amit Jain will be leaving Uber at the end of May to take a well-deserved break. Amit has been instrumental in growing our rides business—first in India from launch to category leadership, and more recently across the Asia Pacific region. I’d like to thank him for his contribution and wish him every success in his future endeavours.

I’m excited that Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, one of our most experienced leaders, will take responsibility for our Asia Pacific rides business in addition to his current role leading our rides teams across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I look forward to seeing Pierre work with our talented APAC teams to unlock opportunity markets such as Japan and South Korea, and continue our strong momentum in markets such as India and Australia. Uber remains deeply committed to the Asia Pacific region and under Pierre’s leadership will continue to invest in our people, products and partnerships.”

The move of integrating the two regions under a single leadership is primarily meant to bring in more synergies in the ridership business. For instance emerging markets like India and sub Saharan Africa which include Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania have a lot of similarities in the business and products which are being developed in one of the countries are being launched in the others. For instance Uber Lite which was developed in India to take care of the slow internet speeds after its success in India has been launched in about 20 other countries which include markets in the sub Saharan region. Similarly high capacity vehicles which have been launched in Egypt are also expected to be experimented with in India to see their potential.