Uber Will 'Invest Aggressively' In India And Southeast Asia, CEO Says (buzzfeed.com) 22
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.
Just take your billion dollars and set it on fire (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Invest or Bribe? (Score:2)
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.
How many boat rides did it serve? (Score:2)
Ola has already expanded into boat ride hailing business, [telegraphindia.com] Can Uber match it?
Minimum distance (Score:2)
How much to the nearest dedicated shitting street?
Misinformation a specialty over at Uber (Score:3)
Wait a minute (Score:3)
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/... [wikipedia.org]
I doubt this will work (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Markets (Score:2)
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" solu
Re: (Score:2)
Being cheap is only one of the attractive point of Uber's service.
The other is ease of use.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
/takes breath
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
How cute. Uber's only attractive point was being cheaper than regulated taxi services. Their next most attractive point was an irrational hatred of taxi services because of high prices.
Uber only achieved lower prices because they ignored the regulations of the taxi industry. Seeing as you clearly dont know much about South East Asia let me hit you with the clue by four.