Uber officially inaugurates its new Asia Pacific regional hub in Singapore

Located in the heart of Singapore’s Central Business District, the new Uber Asia Pacific regional hub is officially inaugurated today.

It comes as a surprise to most as Singapore isn’t a city or country of operation for the ride hailing firm. Our humble city state does serve as an important place of planning, administration and even innovation for Uber. In fact, since Uber began its Singapore operations in 2013, the firm has never left our shores, not even when it had to sell its local operations to Grab and resulted in its subsequent merger with the latter.

Since his appointment as CEO in 2017, Dara Khorowshahi overhauled the firm’s corporate culture to embrace diversity and diversified the services on Uber’s platform. Currently, there are over 20 products on its platform that run the gamut from eats to rides.

In Southeast Asia, in particular Singapore, Uber’s then partnership with ComfortDelgro allowed the former to experiment and fine tune its Taxi Partnership program. This program has allowed Uber to make inroads into North Asian markets that include Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong. One of the main benefits is to increase vehicle utilization and earning opportunities.

In the spirit of experimentation by taking big, bold bets, Uber has explored using other modes of transportation for its ride hailing services. For example, in Mumbai, India, there’s UberBoat that allows commuters to bypass the city’s notorious gridlocked land traffic by calling for a boat. Also in India, there’s Uber Auto, a scooter rickshaw hailing service, and Uber Motor, that originated in Thailand, where two-wheelers are the choice modes of transportation.

Uber leverages on a city’s preferred mode of transportation and attempts to incorporate it into its platform. Uber’s ultimate vision for a city is to reduce congestion in order to make it a safer and greener environment for its dwellers. Riders can enjoy a safe and fuss-free commute while ride operators have ample and equal economic opportunities to enrich their livelihoods.

Currently, Uber boasts of 20,000 employees worldwide and operate in six major continents, on over 65 cities. In Singapore, there are close to two hundred full-time employees and this number is set to grow.

Uber’s new Asia Pacific regional hub in Singapore occupies an entire office floor of 2,000 square meters. It underscores the company’s focus on growing its businesses in the APAC region. According to the company, its next groundbreaking transportation mode, Uber Air will take to the skies by 2023 in Dallas and Los Angeles in the United States, and five other cities located in Australia, Brazil, France, India and Japan.

Unfortunately, Uber has no current plans to start any of its product lines in Singapore or in any Southeast Asian country; however, with our city state’s smart nation and car-lite initiatives, Uber’s business operations and our nation’s development efforts might just cross paths once again in the near future.

Read Next: A sneak peek into Uber’s new and funky Asia Pacific regional hub in Singapore.

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