Uber Eats to get more restaurants onboard globally

In a strategic move to consolidate its position in the food delivery sector, Uber on Monday announced that  it may get more restuarants onboard Uber Eats globally. Its engineering team in Hyderabad is working on initial steps to onboard restaurants and is further working on features such as food menu, payment experience and compliance.

According to the company, the team has built products using computer vision and machine learning (ML) to seamlessly onboard restaurant menus. Its agile technology is now speeding up the process to onboard a surge of restaurants onto the Eats platform.

"Due to the COVID-19 outbreak and its challenging effects on the way people move around and get food, we have a profound responsibility to leverage our minds and technology to help people through this challenge," Haider Sabri, Global Engineering Head for Uber Eats said in a statement.

The team in March alone experienced a ten-fold increase in restaurant onboarding requests from the US and other global markets.

Zomato in January acquired Uber's Food Delivery Business in India in an all-stock deal for nearly Rs 2,500 crore and Uber will have 9.99 per cent stake in the Deepinder Goyal-led food delivery platform.

Meanwhile, Uber India has announced 'Uber Essential' to facilitate essential travel for residents of Mumbai, amidst the ongoing national lockdown. In the coming days, the service will be extended to additional cities across India.

To operationalize the Mumbai service, the company is partnering with the city's traffic police and has identified a select fleet of vehicles for pick-up and drop from and/or to city hospitals.

*Edited from an IANS report