Kathmandu, August 2

Uber, a globally popular ride-hailing service, is gearing up to set up its data centre in Kathmandu as the company has been focusing on data centre expansion in recent years.

Uber's data centre will be located in the building that is currently housing corporate office of United Traders Syndicate in Chabahil, informed Suraj Vaidya, president of United Traders Syndicate, which is authorised dealer of Toyota motors in Nepal.

While Uber is yet to make its inroads to Nepal, the company has chosen Nepal to establish its global data centre ‘considering the cost factor, as it would be relatively cheaper to set up the centre here compared to other South Asian countries'.

“We have held several rounds of meetings and they have expressed interest to lease the space in UTS building in Chabahil. While we have yet to ink a contract, we hope to finalise the deal soon,” said Vaidya..

He further said that the possible entry of Uber with its data centre in Nepal would show the prospects of exploitation of information technology that the country has to offer.

Uber has been massively investing in data centres in recent years as the growth of the ride-hailing company accelerates. In clear evidence of Uber's popularity, its trips doubled in a year, according to international media reports. Uber had served two billion trips in 2016 - the number had ballooned to more than four billion trips in 2017, and the connected cab service is expanding at a rapid pace in the digital economy.

Moreover, Uber has expanded its services like UberRush, which provides on-demand transport logistics and UberEats, which delivers restaurant meals in 12 cities globally.

“The sudden growth has made Uber a major user of data centre infrastructure and the company is further scaling up with ambitions of creating markets for new data-intensive business.”