UberEats Singapore hits the road

UberEats Singapore has launched, the ride-hailing app’s food-delivery service making its Asian debut.

Using the standalone app, Singaporeans can order food from about 100 restaurants. While deliveries are initially limited to the central business and commercial area, the company plans to expand its service coverage as well as menu.

Making its debut in Toronto early this year, the app expanded to four major US cities in March, and Uber began signing up restaurants and testing the service in Singapore last month.

Singapore was also the first Asian market to have Uber’s ride service, in February 2013.

UberEats is up against entrenched food-delivery services such as Rocket Internet-backed FoodPanda and Deliveroo, whose investors include Accel and DST Global. Using the map-routing algorithms Uber uses to connect drivers and passengers as quickly as possible, UberEats Singapore promises delivery within 35 minutes.

It has raised US$9 billion in funding so far, and the delivery driver program is separate from ride-sharing, though drivers can do both.