The Ridesharing’s Trip Doubled Within Six Months
One of the leading online transportation companies in the United States is the Uber, which has its headquarters in San Francisco, California. The founders of the company are Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick. They started in 2009 as ‘UberCab’ and on the following June they released the mobile app with which the company develops, operates and markets its business. All the smartphone users can download the app and book their ride which is then routed to the drivers who own a car. The name of the company was coined from the German word (über) which means ‘super’.
The company received two hundred thousand dollars from the seed funding in 2009 and in 2010, it also raised an additional funding of $1.25 million. The company changed its name from UberCab to Uber in 2011, and by the end of that year it raised $44.5 million.
Global Attention
After the successful operation in California, the company planned to expand its service in the other major cities in the United States like the Washington DC, New York and Chicago from May 2011. Following that, they expanded in Paris and in Philadelphia. They expanded their overseas venture in 2012 and 2013.
The first global service was launched in Paris in December 2011 and in Canada. The company launched a ninety driver launch in London and in November 2012 they launched in Sydney, Australia and it was their first Asia-Pacific launch. On January 2013, the Uber service was launched in Singapore and after the testing phase, they launched their service in South Africa. In September the service was launched in Johannesburg and in October, they launched in Cape Town. They introduced the service in India and they managed to spread the service in many other major cities in the country. The ridesharing company launched their service even in Seoul.
The company raised $1.2 billion funding in June 2014 and the valuation was $18.2 billion and the following summer it raised $1.5 billion in the venture capital. The same year they launched their service in many other countries like Poland, Denmark and Africa. The service expanded in East Africa, Mexico and Lithuania in the year 2015.
In the year 2016 they launched their service in Nigeria and Ghana and they also began their service in Ukraine and Pakistan.
Software and Services
The mobile based app is the key feature of the company. To access the app, the users require a smartphone where they have to download the app on their mobile phone and register themselves in the app by providing their basic information. The riders can request for a ride by checking with the availability of the vehicles in the nearby area and send a request which is routed to the drivers who are available in that area. Once when the ride is confirmed, the rider gets the information about the driver, their identification and the vehicle number along with the pricing.
Pricing and Payment
The pricing system is similar to that of the metered taxis, but is handled by the company. The pricing is based on the time duration of the ride, but in some cities the pricing is calculated according to the distance travelled.
The company claims that their pricing is lesser than the normal taxi fare and that they provide a comfortable and reliable service to their customers. The fares are automatically credited to the rider’s credit card so that the payment process is simple and easy. In some countries the card payment is not available for a large crowd, so to encourage even the cash payers to use the ride, the company introduced the cash payment system through which the riders can even pay their fare in cash.
Surge Pricing: The ridesharing uses an automated algorithm that is used to surge the price according to the demand and supply. It will reduce the demand and also attracts the drivers during the increased demand. Whenever there is a surge pricing, the riders are notified about it in their mobile app. The surge pricing comes into effect during the rush hours, holidays, natural disasters and inclement weather. The algorithm is built in such a way that even during the high times of the day, the maximum waiting time is not more than 5 minutes. The economic efficiency increases in two ways because of the surge pricing, the rising price makes the riders accept the ride whose need is highest and it also motivates many car owners to become individual contractors with the company.
Uberisation
The rise of many new companies in the market has changed the traditional way of marketing to the peer to peer transaction and similarly the rise of platforms in the other industries are compared with the rise of Uber and this is known as the Uberisation. The company is considered as the most powerful and leading multinational company in America. They are also striving hard to get the leading position in the other countries where they have established their services. According to the analysis of May 2016, the company operates in four hundred and fifty cities, over sixty six countries around the world and values $62.5 billion.
The company faces legal and regulations issues in many cities and they have shut down their operation, but still the company is able to receive many investments from the local and global investors because of their strong brand establishment in the local and international market. The main reason behind the company’s success and popularity is the marketing techniques that they followed. As an experimental process, they started the online food orders in Santa Monica in 2014 and later started a courier service at Manhattan called the UberRUSH which offers package delivery service. The Uber for X Essentials allow the consumers to order one hundred items online.
In 2014 they introduced the UberPool, a carpooling service which groups the riders travelling in the same direction to share their ride. The ride cost is much lesser than the normal Uber ride. Because of this plan, the number of cars riding on the road was reduced and even the pollution rate dropped in many cities.
Pride Moment
The company hit their first milestone in December 2015 on the eve of Christmas, with one billion rides over six years of their founding, but within six months it doubled its trips. On Monday, July 18th, 2016 the company completed their two billionth ride. Around 147 rides are tied for the billionth ride because all the rides started at the same time, to be accurate according the Greenwich Mean Time at 4:16:48 am. And the rides happened across the five continents in sixteen countries.
Of late, the company expanded its operation in many cities across the globe and that has resulted in increasing the number of rides. They are also expecting to attain the next billionth ride within a short duration. As a token of celebration and to encourage the hard work, the company announced that they will give all the lucky billionth rides cash prize of $450 and they lucky riders each would receive $450 in their Uber credit. Since the company operates in 450 cities around the world, the prize money given for the lucky drivers and riders is $450.
Author Bio:
Anand Rajendran is CEO and Co-Founder of Dectar, best PHP scripts development company located in India. Dectar is a part of Casperon Technologies a leading social and mobile development company which is Developing Uber for X apps for the past 2 years. I’m a Tech geek, Digital marketing expert, Entrepreneur, and Atheist who loves to write everything about PHP Scripts and mobile application development.
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