Ride-hailing business major Uber has announced the restructuring of its India's business. Uber's India operations will now report directly to vice-president Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty. Coty heads Uber's Europe, Middle East and Africa business from Amsterdam. Till now, the India head used to report to the Asia Pacific region, which has its headquarter in Singapore.
According to Business Standard, apart from his existing responsibilities, Coty will now oversee an integrated portfolio of the region which would include Asia Pacific with countries like India and Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Australia. Earlier the Asia Pacific business was headed by Amit Jain, who started Uber in India. He eventually went on to head the company's Asia Pacific business. With this decision, the Asia Pacific operations will be integrated with Coty's existing set of responsibilities.
Barney Harford, the Chief Operational Officer, at Uber said, "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."
The step to integrating two regions under Coty's leadership has been taken to bring in more synergies in the ridership business. Uber's business in emerging market are although geographically different but their business model and operations are almost similar.
Its Indian market and sub-Saharan Africa, which include Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania, have many similarities in business and products. The company has developed its products in one country and have successfully managed to launch the same in other countries. Notably, Uber Lite, which was developed in India to counter the low-speed internet, is now being launched in about 20 countries which also include countries from the sub-Saharan region.
