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Uber Will 'Invest Aggressively' In India And Southeast Asia, CEO Says (buzzfeed.com)
Pranav Dixit, writing for BuzzFeed News: Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's CEO of six months, said on Thursday that the ride-hailing service would continue to invest aggressively in both Southeast Asia and India, where the company is losing money and faces strong competition from local players like Grab and Ola. Uber has been slow to expand its presence in India and Southeast Asia, allowing competitors to quickly gain ground. Singapore's Grab, for instance, claimed to have 95% of the country's ride-hailing market share last year. And Ola, Uber's Indian rival, currently operates in 110 cities against Uber's 29 cities. Ola does 1 billion rides annually, compared to Uber, which announced in mid-2017 that it completed 500 million total rides in the country in its first four years of operations. "We expect to lose money in Southeast Asia and expect to invest aggressively in terms of marketing, subsidies, etc.," Khosrowshahi told reporters in India, which is Uber's fastest-growing market outside the United States, and where he is currently on his first official tour. While Uber's India operation is not yet profitable, it does account for 10% of Uber's rides globally.
That was exactly your game plan in China, and look what it got you. Nothing pleases me more than watching the froth of venture capital get sent down the drain.
When you consider Uber's track record for all the shady / bad things they've done, does the CEO mean invest or break the law? Because with Uber, it's honestly hard to tell.
The dude could at least blow the cash at home rather than ship it all overseas.
Ola has already expanded into boat ride hailing business, Can Uber match it?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Putt putt putt putt putt putt putt putt putt is that the engine misfiring or the driver talking?
How much to the nearest dedicated shitting street?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Aggressive investment in India, where the company is losing money? That's hilarious, as though there is a magical place somewhere that Uber doesn't lose money!
They said they intend to undercut the competition by selling their services at a loss to put the other companies out of business?
Isn't that illegal anti-competitive behaviour? aka "dumping" and "predatory pricing". Predatory pricing is illegal in India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Taxi fares in Asia in general, maybe with the exception of Japan, are already rather cheap and there is plenty of them on the roads.
I doubt that Uber will be able to generate anything else than additional losses.
What is really strange was there was an announcement a week ago that Uber was giving up on SE Asia and planning on selling their operations there to Grab in exchange for shares in Grab. Now this about turn. I suspect there are factions within Uber's boardroom that cannot agree on their strategy here, so the CEO going around making premature public statements probably isn't a great idea. Or maybe Grab rightly turned down the offer of a failed portion of Uber in return for significant shareholding.
Being cheap is only one of the attractive point of Uber's service.
The other is ease of use.
In markets where Taxi are already cheap, Uber won't trying to compete on the price.
They'll try to compete on the convenience (an app on your smartphone in your pocket, that makes hailing a vehicle easy, makes the payment automatic, etc.)
So their primary competition in these market arent' the local Taxis.
But the local ride sharing apps (TFS mentions Ola and Grab) and the various "automatically pay with your phone" solution (I would suspect that Alipay should have some solution fitting similar usecases).
That doesn't mean Uber will succeed.
Only that the specific price of Taxi in that region isn't relevant for the peculiar struggles of Uber in that market.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm in Hyderabad right now. Business trip. Have been using Uber and the estimated arrival times are very bad. There is also a whole sub-class you can travel with on Uber where you get on the back of a moped. And no passenger helmets required in India to travel on the back of a motor bike. I'm not chancing it. It is extremely extremely cheap though.
So they are basically saying "We are going to spend lots of money to let everyone know we are paying for their rides".
I mean how is that an investment exactly? What's the usual rate of return on burned money?