Your personal driver
Uber
Tagline
Net Worth
$15,000,000,000
Started in (City)
San Francisco
Started in (Country)
United States of America
Incorporation Date
01st December, 2009
Bankruptcy Date
-
Founders
- Garrett Camp
- Travis Kalanick
About
Uber Technologies, Inc., commonly known as Uber, is an American technology company. Its services include ride-hailing, food delivery (Uber Eats), package delivery, couriers, freight transportation, and, through a partnership with Lime, electric bicycle and motorized scooter rental. The company is based in San Francisco and has operations in over 900 metropolitan areas worldwide. It is one of the largest firms in the gig economy. Uber is estimated to have over 93 million monthly active users worldwide. In the United States, Uber has a 71% market share for ride-sharing and a 22% market share for food delivery. Uber has been so prominent in the sharing economy that changes in various industries as a result of Uber have been referred to as uberization, and many startups have described their offerings as "Uber for X".
Beginning
In 2009, Uber was founded as Ubercab by Garrett Camp, a computer programmer and the co-founder of StumbleUpon, and Travis Kalanick, who sold his Red Swoosh startup for $19 million in 2007. After Camp and his friends spent $800 hiring a private driver, he wanted to find a way to reduce the cost of direct transportation. He realized that sharing the cost with people could make it affordable, and his idea morphed into Uber. Kalanick joined Camp and gives him "full credit for the idea" of Uber. The prototype was built by Camp and his friends, Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan, with Kalanick as the "mega advisor" to the company. In February 2010, Ryan Graves became the first Uber employee. Graves started out as general manager and was named CEO shortly after the launch. In December 2010, Kalanick succeeded Graves as CEO. Graves became chief operating officer (COO). By 2019, Graves owned 31.9 million shares. Following a beta launch in May 2010, Uber's services and mobile app officially launched in San Francisco in 2011. Originally, the application only allowed users to hail a black luxury car and the price was 1.5 times that of a taxi. In 2011, the company changed its name from UberCab to Uber after complaints from San Francisco taxicab operators. The company's early hires included a nuclear physicist, a computational neuroscientist, and a machinery expert who worked on predicting demand for private hire car drivers. In April 2012, Uber launched a service in Chicago where users were able to request a regular taxi or an Uber driver via its mobile app.
Road to Success
In July 2012, the company introduced UberX, a cheaper option that allowed people to use non-luxury vehicles, including their personal vehicles, subject to a background check, insurance, registration, and vehicle standards. By early 2013, the service was operating in 35 cities. In December 2013, USA Today named Uber its tech company of the year. In August 2014, Uber launched UberPOOL, a shared transport service in the San Francisco Bay Area. The service soon launched in other cities worldwide. In August 2014, Uber launched UberEats, a food delivery service. Uber logo used from February 2016 until September 2018. In August 2016, facing tough competition, Uber sold its operations in China to DiDi in exchange for an 18% stake in DiDi DiDi agreed to invest $1 billion in Uber. Uber had started operations in China in 2014. In August 2017, Dara Khosrowshahi, the former CEO of Expedia Group, replaced Kalanick as CEO. In July 2017, Uber received a five-star privacy rating from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but was harshly criticized by the group in September 2017 for a controversial policy of tracking customers' locations even after a ride ended, forcing the company to reverse its policy. In February 2018, Uber combined its operations in Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan with those of Yandex. Taxi and invested $225 million in the venture. In March 2018, Uber merged its services in Southeast Asia with those of Grab in exchange for a 27.5% ownership stake in Grab. Uber Rent, powered by Getaround, was a peer-to-peer car sharing service available to some users in San Francisco between May 2018 and November 2018. In November 2018, Uber became a gold member of the Linux Foundation. On May 10, 2019, Uber became a public company via an initial public offering.
Challenges
It would be a very big lie that Camp and Travish didn’t face any obstacle. When their company rather started then, they had faced a lot of criticisms which eventually became their bulls eye. All this criticism started when taxi industries started questioning and criticizing. Secondly, the safety concern of the passenger and short time drivers. Thirdly, increase in traffic congestion and the dynamic in pricing. Lastly, the criticism for collecting fares during taxi strikes. When Uber came in India there was already an Indian based company Ola which was founded in the year 2010. So the competition was quite hard because it had been 2 years when Uber came. Therefore the beginning was no way easy for Camp and Travish to establish the company. These criticisms would have become an excuse or a region of just stopping that startup then and there but Camp and Travish never let that to happen with them.
Failures
Recently in a survey it was found out that Uber is still losing a lot of money, and the company recorded net loss of $1.1 billion, a 24% year over year decline. When this company was started it was like their cup of tea to face failures either by criticism or by pseudo phrasing. But in the year 2019 Uber was losing the money rapidly. Secondly, the regulatory landscape surrounding Uber operation was becoming less welcoming. Uber issued an apology on January 24, 2014 after documents were leaked claiming that Uber employees in New York City deliberately ordered rides from Gett, a competitor, only to cancel them later. The purpose of the fake orders was to waste drivers' time and delay service to legitimate customers.
Achievements
- Best Overall Startup 2014
- Best CEOs for diversity 2019
- Best CEOS women 2019
- Tech Company of the year 2013
Subsidies
- Uber Eats
- Careem
- Postmates
- Cornershop, Inc.
- Uber Freight LLC.
- Social Bicycles Inc.
CEOs
- Dara Khosrowshahi