Uber Eats deploys tech team from India to power innovation in Japan, Belgium

The Hyderabad-based engineering team of Uber Eats is powering the company’s technology innovations in key global markets of Japan and Belgium.

Its technology team, comprising engineering and product divisions, has enabled the integration of Uber Eats with the PayPay app in Japan, a statement said. PayPay is the largest wallet in Japan in terms of volume. 

The integration, which positions the food delivery platform as a mini app within another app, allows users in Japan to place orders on Uber Eats through the PayPay app. The team had earlier integrated Uber Eats with digital wallet platform LINE Pay, the first wallet to be added as a payment option in Japan.

Additionally, the engineering team has also integrated Bancontact, Belgium’s largest electronic payments provider, with Uber Eats, the statement said. Besides offering users in the country a payment option, the integration also makes the platform available to users with Bancontact debit cards, it said.

“The Eats engineering team has been at the forefront of crucial digital payment integrations over the past few months. We’re excited to be able to offer eaters in Japan and Belgium the convenience of digital payments while ordering food, which also helps in maintaining social distance in these challenging times,” Jaiteerth Patwari, engineering lead of Uber Eats, said.

The team works on a global mandate serving a handful of key markets for Uber Eats, including the US, Canada, Belgium and Japan.

Uber Eats India, the company’s food delivery unit in the country, was sold to Zomato in January this year for a total consideration of $206 million in a cash and stock transaction.  

The Delhi headquartered restaurant aggregator paid $35 million in cash as part of the transaction. The remainder was paid out in the form of preference shares, which converted into a nearly 10% stake for Uber in Zomato. 

Ahead of the sale, Uber hived off its local taxi and food delivery verticals to its Indian subsidiary Uber India Systems, which continues to operate the ride hailing operations. At the time, Uber had valued its food delivery vertical at around $104 million.

Earlier this year, Uber laid off about 600 full time employees across driver and rider support verticals in India. The firings were part of the global layoffs outlined by the company in May, where it planned to let go of about 6,700 people.

As several emerging technology-enabled businesses operating in the mobility space reeled under challenges posed by Covid-19 related restrictions across the globe, companies have only recently started witnessing a pickup in demand.