Uber is taking its fight to a new battleground — and other tech companies should take note

REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

Now that Uber's long battle with Didi Chuxing is essentially over, it may be shifting focus to its next adversaries — and the rest of the tech world should pay attention.

The ride-hailing giant is said to be putting resources into Southeast Asia, redeploying 150 engineers from its China team to other markets like Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia, sources told Bloomberg. Uber also plans to hire more engineers in India, the sources said. 

Didi was Uber's main opponent in China, but it has others to face in the rest of Southeast Asia and India. Cab-booking app Ola is valued at $5 billion and is active in 22 cities in India (Uber is active in 29). Ride-hailing app Grab is available in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, and claims to have 350,000 drivers. The company says it has 95% market share in taxi-hailing services in the region.

Uber is only active in 15 Southeast Asian cities and the region hasn't previously been a huge priority for the company — although it says it's already profitable in the Philippines and Singapore.

But Grab's CEO sees the Uber-Didi merger as a sign that Uber is about to shift its focus, writing in a company memo yesterday: "With the deal in China, we expect Uber to turn more attention and divert resources to our region. But we have seen that when the local champion stays true to their beliefs and strengths, they can prevail. We see this happening in China, and it will be the same here."

An impending battle between Uber and Grab aside, what does this mean for the rest of tech?

Not only does the Didi-Uber merger make it clear that succeeding in China isn't easy — so Facebook, Google and Netflix should take note — but Uber turning its attention could be a sign that other Asian markets are a better bet. 

Southeast Asia has a population of more than 600 million, so there's plenty of room to grow in the region — and if Grab's success is any indication, the region is primed for more tech companies to set up shop. And India, Asia's second biggest market, doesn't have its own tech giants to the scale of Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. There are also fewer regulatory hurdles to overcome in India — something which Netflix is already struggling with in China.

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