You can now use the Snapdeal app to book an Uber in India

Hailing a ride on Uber just got easier because you can now book their cab directly using just the Snapdeal app.

While Indian consumers have been enjoying the wave of discounts, bargains, and offers being given by e-commerce companies in their bid to woo customers, the intensifying competition is also forcing the players to enter into partnerships for trading their products and services on each others’ platform.

In April 2015, the online marketplace Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) forayed into the services space by acquiring Freecharge, a utility bill payments and mobile wallet service provider, for a huge $400 million, marking the biggest-ever acquisition in the Indian consumer Internet history. Snapdeal has now just begun offering flight and bus ticket bookings, hotel reservations, and food ordering services on its platform by entering into partnerships with Cleartrip, redBus, Zomato, and home services provider UrbanClap. Offering a range of services through partnerships, instead of just discounts, opens up additional revenue streams for Snapdeal and also ensures that users remain on the platform.

In its latest tie-up, Snapdeal has partnered with Uber by launching in-app integration with the ride-hailing service. This means that if you book a flight or a hotel from the Snapdeal app, you can now travel to the airport or the hotel in an Uber cab by booking the ride directly from the app without needing to install the Uber app on your device.

Snapdeal is currently offering this service on smartphones sporting Android 4.0 and higher, but has assured us that it will soon roll out the feature for other operating systems as well. If you’ve already installed the Snapdeal app on your Android device, then you’ll need to update it to the latest version in order to take advantage of this new feature.

This isn’t the first time that Uber is accepting bookings from outside its own app. For instance, in the US, Facebook recently tied up with Uber by allowing Messenger users to book their cab directly from its messaging app. Here in India, Google has also recently updated its Maps apps to make it easier for users to search for an Uber or Ola cab close to their location. It’ll be interesting to see if Snapdeal’s Indian rivals, Flipkart, Amazon, and Shopclues, also enter into similar partnerships or focus purely on selling products.

Snapdeal is now also offering a Rs 150 discount on your first ever Uber ride, and Rs 50 cashback on all subsequent rides today. You can download the Snapdeal app from the Google Play Store here.

Let us know in the comments below if you’ll find it convenient to book an Uber cab using the Snapdeal app!