The app-based taxi service Uber has applied for a radio taxi licence and hopes to restart operations in New Delhi, where it was banned after allegations that one of its drivers raped a female passenger, officials said Friday.

Uber will improve passenger safety by introducing additional safety measures including more stringent driver verifications and checks, an in-app emergency button and a dedicated incident response team, its spokeswoman Chhavi Leekha wrote in a blog post.

A Delhi transport department official confirmed Uber had applied for a licence to operate as a radio taxi service on Thursday, giving up its long-standing insistence that Uber is a technology provider and not a transport operator.

"We will scrutinize their application to see if they fulfil criteria and only then grant a licence. It's not as if they have resumed operations on roads. This will take time," the official said.

The US-based company was compelled to register as a taxi operator, an Uber spokesman said, because it felt "helpless" after Delhi's transport authorities continued to insist that Uber obtain a licence as a radio taxi service, the Economic Times reported.

In December, a 27-year-old financial executive said she was raped by an Uber driver in Delhi. Delhi's transport department soon thereafter outlawed Uber's operations because it was not registered as a taxi service.

The driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, has been arrested and a fast-track trial has begun.