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Uber recruits hundreds of engineers in India to slash prices.
Uber said on Thursday that he is working to recruit 225 engineers in India, expanding his engineering team in the main overseas sector months after the loss of thousands of jobs worldwide.
The ride-hailing agency, which competes with Ola in India, said today that Manikandan Thangarathnam, who spent almost 13 years as Director of Innovation at Amazon, was hired to head the company's rider and platform innovation teams in Bangalore. (Uber reported that it will employ 140 engineers in India last month. It said today that it was in the process of recruiting another 85 engineers.)
The move comes when many high-profile engineers have left Uber India to join Google and Amazon, among other tech giants, in recent months. A senior engineer who had recently left Uber told TechCrunch that many of his peers had lost faith in Uber's potential prospects in the region.
Uber said that its technology expansion plans in India were in line with its goal of making connectivity and distribution "more available" and being the "backbone" of transport in thousands of cities across the globe.
The business has recently appointed Jayaram Valliyur as Senior Director to head its global finance technology unit. Prior to that role, Jayaram also worked in the Amazon, where he spent 14 years.
News Outlet Information described Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi 's decision to transfer engineering positions to India as a cost-saving move. The study said that Khosrowshahi 's proposal had sparked internal discussion.
Uber's long-time Chief Technical Officer, who quit the company earlier this year, allegedly warned that recruiting more engineers too quickly in India would require the approval of low-quality applicants.
Uber and Ola both claim to be India's No. 1 ride-hailing service. But the head of the SoftBank Vision Fund said last month that Ola had held a "small lead" over Uber in India.
