Overseas Uber trips show Indians are travelling abroad like never before

Global ride-hailing giant Uber today shared travel data of India-registered users that give a peek into global travel trends of Indians.

Uber’s data reflects a sharp increase in the number of Indians using the ride-sharing app abroad during 2023, with the number of overseas travellers being second only to Americans.

During the ongoing summer travel season, Indians are expected to surpass records set in the previous years, the cab aggregator says.

The number of Indians travelling abroad has seen a marked jump over the past two years, with almost a million of them using Uber overseas during the year gone by. As per the data, Indians travelled to close to 1,000 cities across 68 countries over the year. While the number of cities they explored increased significantly, most Uber-ed countries stayed the same - the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

Summer holidays appear to be the most popular travel time for Indians to travel abroad as schools and colleges go into a break, giving families more time to spend together. The most popular month for overseas travel in 2023 was May, compared to June in 2022.

“Indians have been breaking all travel records over the past couple of years, and it’s heartwarming to see how Uber continues to be their trusted last-mile partner in these travels. Be it the familiarity when landing at an airport in a new city, or the safety when riding late at night, it’s a huge mark of trust for us to see Indians book an Uber for their overseas travels,” says Prabhjeet Singh, president, Uber India and South Asia.

While overseas, Indians travelled 25% longer distances in Ubers on average compared to their trips in India, and tried as many as 21 different products across countries, including Comfort Electric which are premium EVs, Multimodal Transit - an option that includes mass-transit modes such as trains and most ubiquitous UberX option among others.

A lot of the countries Indians travelled to operate peer-to-peer ridesharing, letting people use their personal vehicles to give Uber rides, supporting the gig economy. “That perhaps explains a range of luxury vehicle Uber rides for Indians while traveling abroad in 2023 including Porsche Cayenne, Jaguar F PACE, Range Rover Sport, Mercedes S450, BMW 740i M Sport and Lincoln Navigator,” the report says.

“Apart from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, Indians also had some premium EVs show up when they booked Uber rides abroad. Some of them were: Jaguar I PACE Audi e-tron Sportback Mercedes EQE 500 Ford F150 Lightning,” it adds.