Bringing Uber back to Earth
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 22 October 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Investors are losing faith in Uber's promise of rapid growth and market disruption, and are demanding to see actual profits. Oracle's founder Larry Ellison has gone as far as to describe the transport app company as "almost worthless".
Manuela Saragosa speaks to Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, who says the company's problem is that it is a great brand and great app that have been built upon a fundamentally unprofitable market - ride hailing. Meanwhile Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures says that Silicon Valley venture capitalists such as hers are becoming increasingly wary of businesses that generate rapid growth by simply burning through billions of dollars of cash.
Producer: Edwin Lane
(Picture: An UberChopper helicopter in Gdynia, Poland; Credit: Michal Fludra/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Manuel Zaragoza. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Coming up, Uber, it's the |
| 0:07.9 | company that revolutionized the taxi industry. But when, if ever, will it turn a profit? So what you have |
| 0:13.9 | is a great brand on top of a difficult business that is right now unprofitable because consumers |
| 0:19.7 | have become used to getting a $15 |
| 0:22.3 | ride for $10. |
| 0:24.2 | And that's not sustainable. |
| 0:26.0 | And why the companies and people funding tech startups are starting to lose patience. |
| 0:31.1 | The pendulum just swang too far in the direction of growth at all costs with less regard for profitability. |
| 0:40.7 | That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:47.2 | Any person or company that gives money to a fledgling's tech startup |
| 0:52.0 | is betting that it'll be the next big thing, the thing that |
| 0:55.6 | disrupts the way we live or work or shop, the next Amazon say or Apple, which may explain |
| 1:01.3 | why Uber, the company that basically revolutionized the taxi industry, has upped its ambitions |
| 1:06.5 | of late. |
| 1:07.4 | It's not happy with being just a ride-sharing app. |
| 1:10.3 | It wants to become... |
| 1:11.6 | The operating system for your everyday life. Anywhere you want to go, anytime, anything you want, |
| 1:21.0 | anyhow, every time Uber wants to be there with you. |
| 1:27.4 | Yes, Dara Kosro-Shawi, Uber's CEO, wants to get very close to us indeed. |
| 1:33.0 | For now, that means the company is combining its Uber eats food delivery app with its regular ride hailing one |
| 1:38.7 | and adding some public transport information too. |
| 1:42.0 | Dara envisages Uber as the app anyone in any city will |
... |
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