Story of Uber

The Uber Story formally began in 2008, when Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp met at Le Web, a tech conference in Paris. After getting into an argument over the fare with a local cab driver in Mexico, Travis Kalanick jumped out of the moving cab. The incident would leave him with a dislike for conventional cabs. A few years later, he founded Uber. Under him, Uber – went from 3 drivers to 3.9 million drivers, became the highest valued private company in the world and made him a famous billionaire, all within seven years. Then he was fired. The Uber story offers inspiration and also warns about the consequences of pushing the limits too far. Like all entrepreneurs both had failure in startups.

After they returned to California, they began a camp, bought the domain UberCabs.com. After having all setup to hail rides, Uber had a beta launch in San Francisco with three luxury cars in 2010. As the number of users on a platform increases, Uber has became "natural monopoly" in San Francisco. People found Uber to be very convenient. Drivers and users flocked to Uber. It ceased people completely, for using the word "cab" in its name. The business model of outsourcing cars and drivers through contracts, helped keep investments and costs low. Cab firms have to pay hefty license fees to run cabs in a city. Since Uber did not register itself as a Cab Company, it was free of these shackles. Legal loopholes helped Uber push through these issues.

By 2012,Ubex was launched for low cost rides. In 2013, people could use their personal cars for sharing rides on Uber X. It became a great combination of the gig economy and the sharing economy.

The year 2017, would prove to be the worst for Uber. It was fighting lawsuits filed by cab companies and Uber drivers. At the same time, the continuous allegations of a “toxic culture” at Uber led to a federal level investigation into Uber. The resultant reports accused CEO Kalanick of fueling the hyper aggressive culture in order to increase productivity. Kalanick took a sabbatical leave to understand these issues. Two weeks later, he resigned as CEO of Uber.

Under its new CEO Dara Khosrow Shahi, Uber has gone into clean up mode. This is necessary for Uber. It has become a public company with an IPO in 2019. With public shareholders and 22000 employees, Uber cannot continue with its upstart image and growth-at-all-costs mind set. As of 2020, neither Uber, nor its competitors are profitable. Travis Kalanick has moved onto other projects. While he is still hated by some, Uber certainly wouldn’t have achieved such scale without someone as intense as him. Uber says it plans to become profitable quite soon and has been cutting losses by selling some of its businesses to competitors. We all hope that this iconic company does well.