Smart regulations on ride-sharing will boost innovations - Uber

Its chief business officer Emil Michael said it allowed a basic ride-sharing business model to work well in Malaysia, and businesses could start innovating on other services including putting more people in fewer cars.

"Imagine, instead of having 20 people in 20 Uber cars, we could have 20 people in five cars.

"This will improve fuel efficiency and the environment, as well as increase income and reduce cost. That is where we are heading next," he told Bernama at the Global Entrepreneurship Community 2016 here.

Michael noted that the 2017 Budget allocation to incentivise car downpayment for Uber drivers and the formulation of proactive and positive ride-sharing regulations in Malaysia would catalyse the improvements.

"Uber will start thinking about other business lines once the regulations on ride-sharing business has been established.

"One business line is the food delivery service, UberEATS, which has been operating in 50 cities globally," he said.

He believes that government support for innovation, ride-sharing and entrepreneurship was a great combination and provided good opportunities to grow the business.

UberEATS was launched a year ago and is powered by the Uber application.

On business growth, Michael said its Malaysia operation was expected to chalk up a triple-digit growth this year compared to last year, which included growth in ridership and trips.

"It turns out wherever you go, people want to push the button and get a ride, and people want to drive their cars and make some money," he said, adding the high car ownership in Malaysia had encouraged the growth.

On the impact of the mass rapid transit (MRT) and new light rail transit (LRT) lines to the business, Uber head of communications for Singapore and Malaysia Leigh Wong said the commencement of these services provided the opportunity for the ride-sharing firm to grow and it would not impact it negatively.

"Data showed that 23 per cent of the company's service starts and ends at the LRT stations. Hence, our services complement the public transportation services," he said.

On Malaysia's startup scene, Michael expects there will be more coming into the fray over the next few years given the strong government support on innovation and entrepreneurship.

"One of the things that make it viable to start a company here is that there is a cluster of talents.

"When you have a community of people trading on ideas and engineers who knows how to build things, it makes Malaysia a hot bed for entrepreneurship and companies...It's a forward-thinking government here," he said.

To-date, Uber operates in eight cities across Malaysia comprising Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, Penang, Melaka, Seremban, Johor Bahru, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu.