Online Taxi-hailing service Uber has raised $1.2 billion in another funding round that now brings the company’s valuation to $40 billion. This fresh round of funding would be used for expansion in Asia Pacific region.

Travis Kalanick, CEO, Uber announced the news on Uber’s official blog without naming the investors involved in the deal. Travis also mentions clearly on the blog that there are chances that the value of this round maybe more than $1.2 billion. 

According to a filing with the SEC, Uber plans to raise as much as $1.8 billion in funding. It would mean less pressure for IPO in the near future.

Earlier this year, Uber has raised $1.2 billion funding round from Fidelity Investments, Wellington Management, and BlackRock Inc. along with previous investors – Summit Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, and Menlo Ventures. This round of funding had raised the company’s valuation five-fold as compared to the last round of funding of $258 million by Google Ventures that gave it a valuation of $3.4 billion.

Travis also shared that in 2015 alone, Uber will generate over 1mm jobs in cities around the world and with that millions of people may decide that they no longer need to own a car because using Uber will be cheaper than owning one. Parking could become less strained in the biggest cities and city congestion may actually start to ease.

In India, Uber has been going through ups and downs with RBI regulations fiasco. According to RBI, a two-factor authentication is mandatory for ‘Card-not-present’ transactions in India. A ‘Card-not-present’ transaction is where one uses the numbers present on the card and is not carrying a physical card, in which case usually a One-time-password is sent to the user to secure the transaction. 

Hitherto, Uber was storing user’s credit card information and automatically deducting the ride charges from the account, but now it has finally implemented Paytm Wallet. With the Paytm wallet move, 600 million people who have a bank account with net-banking facilities can now use Uber’s services. This leads to a 120X increase in its potential user base. Five million Indians own a credit card, and with the older payment system only these many could use the service.

In India, Uber has also started its vehicle-financing program. Under this program, Uber is partnering with the top lending companies across India, including AU Financiers and Shriram Transport Finance and Toyota Financial Services, to create vehicle financing schemes with low down payment, superior finance rates and faster turn-around time, all exclusive to Uber. Uber India has also worked out exclusive discounts on vehicles with leading automobile manufacturers like Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors and Toyota.