Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick will meet Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman later this week to discuss the company’s plans in India. He will also possibly try and ensure that the cab hailing service’s Indian competitors are not able to influence policy changes that stop it from offering discounts.

“The Uber CEO is scheduled to meet the Commerce Minister on December 16. There is no agenda for the meeting as it is a courtesy call, but it is likely that he would like to be reassured that the government is not contemplating any changes to the policy which has allowed the company to expand its services,” a government official told BusinessLine .

Indian taxi service providers, including Ola and Meru, have petitioned the government, seeking changes to the existing policies for taxi aggregators which bar them from offering deep discounts to customers.

In their meetings with officials from the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) and the Niti Aayog, the domestic companies had argued that foreign-origin companies with deep pockets could afford to offer big discounts and take a hit in their bottomlines, which Indian start-ups could not. They had also moved the Transport Ministry on the matter.

The companies want the Centre to disallow direct discounts, on the lines of similar restrictions on e-commerce companies that have foreign funding. “There is no move yet on the part of DIPP to look at such restrictions,” the official said.

Uber, which recently sold out to rival Didi Chuxing in China, does not desire a similar outcome in India, where its share in the organised cab hailing market has risen to an estimated 30 per cent in 2016.

However, there is more trouble brewing for the company in India with the Competition Appellate Tribunal recently asking the Competition Commission of India to probe afresh charges of predatory pricing levelled by its competitor Meru Cabs.

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