Uber’s Travis Kalanick is trying out a new strategy to win in India

Taxi-hailing apps are split into two camps: Uber vs the rest. In December, rivals Ola in India, Didi Kuaidi in China, GrabTaxi in Southeast Asia, and Lyft in the US announced a strategic global rideshare partnership, all with the aim of taking down Uber.

Now it’s Uber’s turn to retaliate, and it’s taking a slightly different approach to do that.
Of course, Uber did all that was obvious. In India, the company went head to head with Ola, started accepting cash payments and flirted with the idea of taking on auto rickshaws as partners.

But the taxi industry is evolving beyond obvious tweaks and gimmicks. Uber has decided to up the ante by going not only after discounts, driver partners, and customers, but also app developers who will help to integrate Uber into a number of other platforms.

Or so the company hopes.

On January 12 and January 15, Uber is going to host a hackathon in Bangalore and Delhi respectively, the first time the company has hosted such an event in Asia.

The India events will be followed by similar events in China on January 16-17, Saad Ahmed, business development lead for Uber India, told Tech In Asia.

Coming up: big announcement

The idea is that Uber will give 10 developers the opportunity to build apps that can be integrated with Uber. Think of the Zomato-Uber team, where you get a small feed giving you the option to “Take an Uber” to the restaurant you are looking up. Travel website Yatra has confirmed attendance, he said.

The hackathons come close on the heels of Uber’s announcement that chief executive Travis Kalanick will mentor startups in India during his visit this month.

Kalanick is visiting to take part in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Startup India conference, which is an effort to bolster entrepreneurship in the country.

While Kalanick will be among many other global leaders attending the event, for Uber, this involvement is significant.

The company has locked horns with New Delhi over multiple issues in the past, from the way it processed payments, to its licensing, to battling perceptions and legalities after one of its drivers raped a woman passenger.

So, making nice with the Indian government may be a stroke of genius for the company, potentially helping Travis iron out some of his worries.

See: Seven problems Uber ran into in AsiaAnd as rival Ola branches out into various services, from food delivery to groceries, Uber may be onto something as it foregoes ornamental bells and whistles for a deeper, API-based approach that could potentially result in more car bookings.

“We have a vision for the API and that is to make Uber ubiquitous wherever there is intent for travel. If we can convert a user’s intent to travel within our partner applications, that’s a success for our API,” Saad said.

He is hoping players in the ecommerce and other compatible businesses will be able to integrate Uber into their platforms, and cited UberRUSH as an example of how that could work.

“UberRUSH is an application that works well with the ecommerce industry,” Saad said.

Alongside the India hackathon, Uber is set to make a global announcement on January 12, he said, but did not give details.