 "Uber sets up new centre of excellence in Visakhapatnam, to hire 500 people")
Ride-hailing major Uber on Monday said it has set up its second centre of excellence (CoE) in Visakhapatnam and will hire about 500 people for the facility by the end of next year.
The US-based company which is locked in an intense battle with Bengaluru-headquartered Ola for market leadership in India already operates a CoE in Hyderabad.
"The Visakhapatnam CoE is an extension of our Hyderabad centre to ensure business continuity...it will provide specialised customer support for critical incidents that require immediate attention for both riders and our driver partners," Uber Senior Director, Community Operations for Asia Pacific, Wen-Szu Lin told PTI.
He added that the centre will support customers in India as well as APAC (Asia-Pacific) region.
Set up at a cost of $800,000 (about Rs 5.73 crore), the new centre will create about 500 new jobs. The trained teams will respond to any urgent issue or incident that is reported to the company and will operate 24/7.
"We have already hired 70 people and this number will go up to 120 by early next year. We expect to have about 500 people by the end of next year," he said.
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Lin added that the launch of the second centre in India is a reiteration of the company's commitment to the Indian market.
"Through the new CoE, we plan to expand our global customer support footprint as well as aim to create new economic opportunities for the high caliber talent in this country," he said.
Uber had launched its first India centre in Hyderabad in 2015, and now has a little over 1,000 employees providing critical regional and global customer support services to Uber riders, drivers, Eats customers, couriers, and restaurant partners.
The Visakhapatnam facility is the 12th such centre globally for the company. Uber has two CoEs in the US in Chicago and Phoenix, and four in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region in Limerick (Ireland), Lisbon (Portugal), Cairo (Egypt), and Krakow (Poland).
It has two CoEs each in Latin America (Costa Rica and Sao Paulo), and Philippines (Manila and Pampanga).