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Six months into hiring Ashish Saxena as the first India employee of his new venture CloudKitchens in 2019, Travis Kalanick realized he needed to take a different approach for this market.

In other markets, the ousted Uber CEO’s cloud kitchen business—also known as dark or ghost kitchens—involves buying or long-term leasing of low-value distressed properties such as parking lots or abandoned malls and converting them into high-technology kitchen infrastructure buildings.