UBER

Uber is a ride-hailing The Uber app

company that offers automatically figures out
the Uber mobile app, which the navigational route for
you can use to submit a trip the driver, calculates the
request that is automatically
distance and fare, and
sent to an Uber driver near
transfers the payment to
to you, alerting the driver to
your location. The the driver from your
accepting Uber driver will selected payment
then come and pick you up method, without you
and drive you to your having to say a word or
requested destination. grab your wallet.
UBER
April 2007: Travis Kalanick
becomes a millionaire at
age 30. He sells his
startup, called
RedSwoosh, to a cloud
company called Akamai
for $23 million. It's the
second company's he's
been involved in since he
dropped out of UCLA in
1998.
 December 2008: Travis
Kalanick attends the LeWeb
technology conference in
Paris, where he first hears the
idea for Uber from
StumbleUpon founder Garrett
Camp. Camp tells a story
about spending $800 on a
private driver for New Year's,
and how splitting the cost with
a lot of people would make
black car services more
affordable.
March 2009: Camp and
two graduate school
friends, build the first
version of their black-
car service, called
UberCab. Kalanick
served as a "mega
advisor," but he has also
said his title back then
was "chief incubator."
June 2010: UberCab
launches in San
Francisco. At the time, it
cost about 1.5 times as
much as a cab, but
ordering a car was as
simple as sending a text
or pressing a button. It
quickly became a hit
among Bay Area techies.
October 2010: UberCab
closes a $1.25 million
seed funding round from
First Round Capital,
investor Jason Calacinis,
Kalanick's friend Chris
Sacca, and Napster
cofounder Shawn
Fanning.
February 2011: Uber
closes an $11 million
Series A funding round
that values the company
at $60 million. Benchmark
leads the round, and the
firm's Bill Gurley joins
Uber’s board of directors.
May 2011: Uber
launches in New York
City, which is today one
of its biggest markets,
but which also presents
some of the strongest
pushback from the taxi
industry.
December 2011: Uber
begins to expand
internationally, starting
with Paris, France. It also
closes a $32 million Series
B funding round led by
Menlo Ventures, Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos, and
Goldman Sachs.
August 2013: Uber moves
into India and Africa, and
it closes a Series C funding
round that sees an
enormous $258 million
investment from Google
Ventures, now known as
GV. This round values
Uber at $3.76 billion.
July 2014: Uber enters
China after raising a
$1.2 billion funding
round at a $17 billion
valuation a month
previous. At the time,
China looked like it was
set to become Uber’s
biggest market.
December 2014: Uber
raises $600 million from
Chinese search powerhouse
Baidu. Baidu’s mobile-
search and maps apps
begin to integrate with
Uber, and it seemed that
Uber was gearing up for a
fight with other prominent
Chinese tech companies.
September 2015: Uber's
China arm raises $1.2
billion to aid in its fight
in the China market.
Uber’s biggest
competitor — Didi
Kuaidi, later called Didi
Chuxing — responds by
raising about $3 billion.
 June 2016: Uber raises
$3.5 billion from the Saudi
Arabia Public Investment
Fund, Uber's largest
investment from a single
investor. Yasir Al
Rumayyan, managing
director of the Public
Investment Fund, joins
Uber's board.
 January 2018: Uber
officially closes a deal
for Japanese investor
SoftBank to take a 15%
stake in the ride-hailing
company, becoming its
largest shareholder.
 May 2019: Uber goes public
on the New York Stock
Exchange, and prices its IPO
at $45 a share with an initial
market cap of $75.5 billion.
However, by the end of the
day, shares were down to
$41.57 a piece, leaving
investors who got in at the
IPO price with a cumulative
loss of $655 million.
Current Situation
• No doubt Uber was global to begin with. Uber
took up a problem to solve that is truly global,
came up with the idea in Paris, launched it in
the San Francisco market, and 10 years later
they are in 600+ markets all over the world. In
fewer than 10 years, Uber has managed to
expand from North America to every
populated continent Europe, Asia, South
America, Africa, and Australia.
• No technology company has experienced
these challenges and turned them into
opportunities more acutely than Uber. Uber
moved faster than any other company going
international.
• And because of money that is earmarked for foreign
clones of successful U.S. companies, if you don’t
move quickly, the clones will pop up fast. This is a
well-known and adopted business models around
the globe by local startups and companies going
after successful business ideas from elsewhere. Few
of the well-known ones to call out that forced Uber
to rapidly expand globally to be early movers in the
market and not lose the market for local clones.
 US and Canada:
• Bloomberg reports Uber lost $1.27 billion in the
first half of this year, which is unprecedented,
even for a tech company. Uber is clearly playing
by the same “grow first, make money later” edict
of Silicon Valley, so it should be no surprise the
company’s costs have increased as its operations
expand into new cities. Uber’s market gain in US
and Canada is paying for the operational losses
for all the global expansion mishaps.
 South America: 
• Uber sees Latin America as the Promised Land
somewhere it can grow rapidly facing weak,
under-funded competition. In Latin America,
however, Uber’s primary ride-hailing
competitors are less established and just don’t
have enough money right now to make Uber’s
life too difficult. The company is already doing
about twice as many trips a month in Latin
America as it is in India
 Europe:
• Uber which launched in Europe five years ago,
has faced fierce opposition from regular taxi
companies and some local authorities, who
fear it creates unfair competition because it is
not bound by strict local licensing and safety
rules. Uber Pop is now banned in France,
Germany, Italy and Spain, and the company is
appealing pending bans in the Netherlands
and Belgium
 Middle East: 
• Since launching in the UAE in 2013, Uber is
now available in nine countries and 15 cities in
the region, including Cairo, Amman, Beirut,
Manama and Doha. Business is especially brisk
in Saudi Arabia, where on June 1 the Public
Investment Fund announced it was investing
$3.5bn in the company.
 Africa:
• Uber entered South Africa in 2013, Nigeria in
2014.  While Uber has inspired a series of new
players in the market, none of them have
made much of a dent in Uber’s expansion in
Africa. Ultimately, Uber’s adaptation to
regional markets, like the introduction of cash
payments, gives it local flexibility with global
clout. For both investors and drivers, Uber is
the most reliable ride-hailing app in Africa.
 China: 
• Uber recently revealed that it is losing more
than $1 billion per year in China. On Aug. 1,
2016 Uber agreed to leave China after
losing more than $2 billion in two years doing
war with its ride-hailing rival Didi Chuxing.
Uber didn’t walk away empty-handed. The
company took a 17.5 percent stake in Didi’s
business in exchange for an exit. 
 India:
• Before Uber arrived in India though, another
company could implement a similar model
here, and today, Ola is one of the most well-
funded tech startups in India. Uber's ‘launch
playbook’ hasn't seen it take a position of
dominance in India, where Ola is providing
real competition. Uber is leading in marketing
innovation in India but still lacks market share
compared to Ola
 South East Asia:
•  In Singapore, by contrast, the government
strictly controls the number of cars on the
road and thus Uber's problem is not too many
cars, but too few. Uber faces increasing
competition in Southeast Asia, such as from
Gojek, in Indonesia. Post to China exit Uber
may go more active in South East Asia regions.
 Australia:
• Uber launched in Australia in October 2012.
Since then Uber has become major player in
Australia with little to no resistance. Market
reception and adoption is in similar lines of US
and Canada.
 Internationalization
• Uber has exited from China market, not find
success in Europe market, not able to
penetrate South East Asia market, tough
competition in India. Although Uber has seen
significant success in US, Canada, Latin
America, Africa, Australia and Middle East. Its
global expansion strategy is not sustainable
unless Uber makes serious changes to its
‘launch playbook’.
 Localization is a key ingredient of Uber
• Lion City Rentals, the Uber subsidiary, has about 300
cars. Within two to three years it will be by far the
biggest car rental company in Singapore. This is quite
far from Uber core business value of not owning cars.
• Uber offers different products for different cities, such
as UberAUTO, which was launched in New Delhi (India)
in April to accommodate auto-rickshaw users.
• The business has launched UberBOATS in Istanbul
• UberCHOPPER in Shanghai.