Uber’s India tech team powers Uber Eats to 1 million merchants globally
Hyderabad : As Uber celebrates the milestone of surpassing one million merchants worldwide, its engineering team based out of India has much to be proud of in making this achievement possible. Merchants on Uber Eats include restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, and other convenience outlets that reach customers through the app. The teams based out of India support a network of a million merchants across the globe through the Uber Eats tech platform.
The Uber Eats journey began a decade ago as UberFresh, with just a handful of restaurants in Los Angeles. Since then, the business has undergone remarkable growth and innovation, evolving into the leading food delivery platform in over 6,000 cities across 45 countries.
This monumental milestone marks a significant step in Uber Eats’ journey, while also underscoring the role of the India engineering support centers in the growth and evolution of business.
Speaking on the milestone, Jaiteerth Patwari, Director – Engineering, Uber and Head of Eats Engineering said, “This milestone is a testament to the hard work of teams across Uber. Most of our Merchant Tech is supported out of India, and we take pride in our efforts to positively impact the merchants who are integral to our success. The extremely talented teams in India continue to redefine the future of food delivery and enhance the lives of merchants and customers worldwide.”
The team has been instrumental in mapping out several innovations over the years, making it seamless for merchants to conduct their business on the platform. Some of these include:
Menu Reader: A feature powered by advanced computer vision and artificial intelligence to seamlessly onboard restaurant menus on the Uber Eats marketplace. This was crucial during the pandemic when tens of thousands of restaurants all over the world could continue earning even when people stayed indoors.
BYOC: As a flexibility option, the team supported the merchants with the option to manage their own delivery using a feature called Bring Your Own Courier (BYOC). This was critical while onboarding leading global quick-service chains such as Domino’s. The experience offers eaters the option to track their order even when the couriers are managed by the restaurant.
Eats Payment integration with favourite local players in Japan (PayPay, LinePay), and in other countries.
Merchant Onboarding: The engineering team supported merchants with industry leading machine learning models to significantly reduce the time it takes to onboard them. The efficiency of the onboarding process increased by 50% on the back of this update.
Uber Eats Manager: Another insightful tool for merchants, ‘Uber Eats Manager’, provides statistics on the health of the merchant’s operations, invoices, reports, along with key insights on how to grow their business.
The Eats Engineering team comprises over 130 techies including engineers, product managers, the design team, and data scientists.