Uber has a new BFF in India thanks to funding and partnership with country’s biggest media group

Uber and the Times of India Group today jointly announced a new partnership that will help the on-demand car service with its roll-out across India.

Uber’s blog post says that this entails “a commercial marketing arrangement accompanied by a small investment.” Neither Uber nor the Times of India Group – which has a vast media empire across print and online media, as well as a fast-expanding array of web services – revealed the terms of the deal.

California-based Uber first launched in India in August 2013. In December 2014, an alleged sexual assault on a female passenger in Delhi by her Uber driver – who turned out to be a serial rapist with a criminal record that Uber’s lax screening system had not spotted – resulted in the company being banned from the capital and several other cities for about six weeks before a new safety mechanism for passengers was introduced.

Satyan Gajwani, CEO of the spin-off Times Internet division, said in a statement this morning:

Having spent time with Travis [Kalanick] and the Uber team, we are delighted to partner with the fastest growing company in the world, to help bring affordable, convenient, and safe transportation to every consumer in India, while developing a real spirit of micro-entrepreneurialism for thousands of drivers. Times Global Partners is a platform we established to help the best companies in the world succeed in India, and we’re confident that together, we can improve lives and create jobs for millions of Indians.

Kalanick emphasized that the deal will help Uber with “marketing and distribution” in India, the firm’s second largest global market, but details are scarce at this point. Uber now operates in eleven cities across India – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Pune.