Uber to hold hackathons in Bengaluru and Delhi

Ride-hailing app Uber is holding its first hackathon in India in Bengaluru and Delhi later this month to deepen its ties with the developer community.

The focus will be on integrating Uber's API (application programming interface) with the participants' apps. Uber's API is already integrated with apps in India like those of Zomato, ZoRooms and Practo. This means those using these apps -to go to a restaurant, hotel or doctor respectively -can book an Uber cab without using the Uber app.

Uber is trying to encourage many more such integration. The India hackathon comes after similar events in Lagos in Nigeria, Helsinki, Hawaii and the US.

"We are looking at building a robust ecosystem of developers here. There will be 15 teams comprising of a product manager and 3-4 engineering professionals working on building moving experiences. We want to have a long tail of developers and engage with companies of all sizes," said Saad Ahmed, business development lead for Uber India.

Teams from transit app Ridlr, online travel portal Yatra, and e-wallet provider Paytm have been selected for the hackathon. Uber will curate responses from individual developers. The winning team will win $500 worth of Uber credits and other goodies.

A number of original innovations have come from these hackathons. Last year, TextB er was developed at a 48-hour hackathon in the US, an app that enables Uber users without a smartphone to hail a ride by simply sending a text.