Uber Eats entered Sri Lanka in 2018, delivered three million orders in its first year and ten million by its second. Several crises followed, each one stress-testing the platform. Varun Wijewardane, Country Manager – Delivery at Uber Sri Lanka, says that as Colombo became a mature, well-penetrated market, the growth story had to come from somewhere else. He cites grocery delivery, which many turned to out of necessity during the crises but continue to use to this day.
In a conversation with Echelon, Wijewardane explained why the platform is now turning to cities where e-commerce has barely started.
The platform has launched in new locations across Sri Lanka at a rapid pace. What does it cost to enter a new market like Anuradhapura compared to the original Colombo launch?
The cost structure has changed significantly since the platform launched. Entering a new city today involves extensive groundwork: consumer research, mapping restaurant density, understanding cuisine preferences, and identifying language needs, all before a single order is placed.
When we started out in Colombo, the priority was building brand awareness. In newer cities, the brand is already known, so the work is about demonstrating long-term value to restaurant and grocery partners, showing them that the platform is not just an e-commerce tool but a driver of financial independence and structural growth. A dedicated team now works outside Colombo full-time and on the road continuously, which is a significant departure from the early years when operations were focused almost entirely on Colombo and the Western Province.
Grocery is a good example of how that value has evolved. It started out a crisis-driven behaviour, but it has become a habit. Major retailers like Keells, Glomark, and Celeste are now on the platform alongside a growing number of neighbourhood grocers, and same-price delivery within 20–30 minutes has made it preferable to a weekly shopping trip. Basket sizes are growing faster than in restaurants, driven by consumers shifting from occasional top-up orders to regular weekly shops. Beyond food, electronics brands, health and beauty, and occasion-driven purchases are generating meaningful volumes. E-commerce penetration outside Colombo has barely started, so there’s lots of room to grow.
As the platform expands into these cities, how does its role change across customers, restaurant partners, and delivery partners?
It depends on market maturity. In a newer city like Anuradhapura, the priority is demand. Without consumers placing orders, the marketplace cannot function, so investment flows toward building that consumer base first. I want to see growth targets of 70–90% year-on-year.
Colombo is a more mature market, so the focus shifts to efficiency across all three sides. There, the conversation moves beyond volume to quality metrics: how reliably are orders fulfilled, how engaged are restaurants with the platform’s tools, and how fairly are delivery partners being compensated? Order frequency in Colombo runs roughly 2–2.5x higher than in other Sri Lankan cities. This gap is due to years of category development, but cities like Galle and Kandy are now beginning to close in.
What trends did Uber Eats see during the country’s recent crises, and what lessons is it taking forward?
The platform moved into essential-service territory during this period. Demand for restaurant food spiked as people avoided going out, and grocery delivery saw its fastest growth, a pattern that has continued to this day.
On the delivery partner side, the focus became keeping the ecosystem functioning, securing separate fuel supplies, distributing essentials to delivery partners, and adjusting earnings rates to reflect the real cost of operating amid high inflation. An earnings floor accounts for real operating costs, ensuring pay never drops below a viable threshold.
The key lesson taken forward is stability. The team now operates on defined crisis guidelines rather than improvising, and decisions are made jointly between the local team and regional leadership.
Did order volumes drop when consumers were feeling the income squeeze?
The crises highlighted the platform’s role as an economic stabiliser. The most acute consumer impact came during 2022, when high inflation led to a large adjustment in spending behaviour. Beyond that period, subsequent crises had not yet produced a comparable shift in restaurant or grocery pricing.
We’re responding to today’s fuel issues by making this scarce resource go further and reducing the total kilometres driven to move goods across a city. For tens of thousands of delivery partners, a missed delivery is less an inconvenience than a gap in income that directly affects whether families can be fed.
In other markets, Uber One has driven higher order frequency and better retention. Is that playing out the same way here?
Sri Lanka has one of the most engaged consumer groups in Uber’s global portfolio, and that is reflected in membership growth that has grown faster over the past 18 months. Uber One members show a measurable uplift across every key metric: frequency, basket size, and breadth of use cases.
Free delivery and priority support make it an easy decision for most users, and a growing number of new users are joining much earlier than before. Membership is active across all cities where Uber Eats operates, not just Colombo. Given the scale of the platform’s ambitions outside the capital, reaching and retaining consumers in smaller cities will be as important as anything happening in Colombo.
A version of this article in the May 2026 print edition incorrectly named one of the companies (it is Celeste, not Cargills). This has been corrected here.