Few are those companies who blow you away and make you wonder, how a business can be so cool and so awesome. We had Facebook Apple and Tesla and then we had a company whose sole intention was to make transport easy and efficient. Well traveling within the world's busiest cities is always a hassle to those of us who do not own a vehicle of our own. Public transport is often unsuitable in terms of comfort and privacy and it's quite cumbersome too. It also does not cater to specific times or immediate needs of travel within a city. However there is one company that is trying its best to overcome this hurdle. This is the company which is not just insured a commuters hassle-free but also make sure that it's economical and luxurious. Today we are talking about the story of the world's biggest taxi network company, Uber which is the brainchild of Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp.
The story of Uber takes us back to 2008 when Travis and Camp were attending a conference in Paris. Travis and Camp like everybody were complaining about the many crappy things we all have to deal with in life including finding a cab, when we are plied with luggage under the rain and no taxi seems to pass by then it seems like the Eiffel Tower or Paris's finest restaurants were not enough to distract them from a brilliant idea trapped under the grey clouds because the next thing you know these two Uber kids were already brainstorming and thinking about ways to solve this global issue of finding cars at the right time and the right place.
After the conference the entrepreneurs went their separate ways but Camp returned to San Francisco and he continued to be fixated with the idea and bought the domain name ubercab.com. Till 2009 Garrett camp was still the CEO of StumbleUpon but he began working on a prototype for uber cab as a side project. Garrett took the lead and went on playing around with a couple of idea prototyping several solutions and engineering a mobile app for the iPhone that would revolutionize the very idea of getting around. Their service was tested in New York in early 2010 using only three cards and the official launch took place in San Francisco later in May. Ryan Graves who was Uber's general manager and
an important figure in the early stages of the company became CEO of Uber in August 2010. Later in December 2010 Travis kalanick took over as the CEO while Ryan aquired the role of COO and a board member. Well with just a few cars and even fewer people knowing about the start-up at the time Uber's still went on to be a big hit.
Soon after San Francisco joined in to host over and since then here's no stopping to this magnificent idea as it is just been growing exponentially till date. The ease and simplicity of booking a car ride fuel the app's rising popularity. With the tap of a button a ride could be ordered and GPS would automatically identify your location which would be conveyed to the driver through the app. This system was widely accepted by people and later more number of people started using over later in October of 2010 the company received its first major funding of $1.25 million led by first round capital. However their happiness was short-lived as in the same month the company received a cease and desist order from the San Francisco municipal transportation agency one of the main issues cited was the use of the word cap in Uber cabs name.
However even with the lawsuit going Travis was ready to fight back. It did not shut the business down and kept the cars rolling all he did was he job the word cap from the company name and renamed it to just Uber. He later bought uber.com domain name
from Universal Music Group next he went to meet the city's municipal transportation agency and explained that uber was not a taxi company instead they were a portal offering technology service to independent drivers. Uber then began its widespread expansion using various ways mediums and strategies.
One of their strategies was surge pricing policy that's meant to
lower the prices when the demand is low and increase it when the demand goes high. This is the very scheme used by airlines and hotels however this strategy received immense criticism from every angle. But Travis being the rebel entrepreneur he loved it off and did not care much for it. Rather he was focusing mostly on business expansions to multiple cities and countries. Starting May 2011 the company began expanding into a new city every month across the United States and by the year end they began expanding internationally as well. The first foreign country where Uber was owns was France. They launched their servers in Paris and around the same time it also goes a $32 million Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Goldman Sachs.
After almost two years of branching out its services to more cities and incrementing a series of new campaigns and projects the company launched its services in India and Africa. The move occurred in August 2013 after Google Ventures invested of booking $258 million into the company as part of a CDC funding round. Now as Uber grew international it also began experiencing disputes with governments taxi companies competitors critics and many others and a lot of region there have been many protests and a lot of violence has also been seen at various levels. Failing to resolve the issues many cities have also asked for a complete shutdown of the service like Travis being the new and improvised version of him, he successfully managed to make his way whenever there was an obstacle using his mastermind tricks and strategies. He hired former Barack Obama's campaign manager David as a lobbyist to mobilize public support for the service he also launched Uber chopper, Uber pools, Uber rush, Uber essentials and Uber fresh in different cities of the world.
Well Travis did create his own part to fight the competitors and enemies and to bring the company to where it is today Uber's disruptive technology explosive growth and constant controversy make it one of the most fascinating companies to emerge over the past decade. The eight year old company has rocketed to become the highest valued private startup company in the world. Valued by investors a $69 billion dollars, it exceeds the market gap of giant companies like General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Tesla. Today Travis Kalanick has single-handedly managed to royally grow his business empire by negotiating with the government, the regulators and by defeating his competitors in almost every country that uber operates in.
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