Uber wants to invest $1bn to boost business in India

Ride your bike, catch an auto rickshaw - or call an Uber taxi with your phone

The taxi booking service Uber has said it will invest $1bn (£0.64m) to expand its business in India.

The US company wants to use the money to expand to more cities and invest in new products and payment solutions.

The decision comes after the firm in June said it wanted to invest the same amount in China, also to expand to more cities in the country.

Earlier in the year, Uber was banned in India after rape accusations against one of its drivers.

The government had told unregistered web-based taxi services like Uber to halt operations in the wake of the rape accusations.

Uber applied for new licenses in New Delhi and other cities but continued its operations while approvals were pending.

App-based aggregator services have been criticised in India for not doing proper background checks on drivers they recruit.

In July, a woman accused a driver of a similar taxi service, Ola, of having masturbated while he was driving her.

Ambitious targets

According to the Financial Times newspaper, Uber hopes that the investment would enable the company to reach 1 million daily journeys in India over the next nine months.

Estimates put the number of current Uber journeys in India at 200,000 per day.

"Uber has grown exponentially in India, a global priority market for us, which has also quickly become the largest market geographically for Uber outside the US," Amit Jain, president of Uber India, said in a statement.