Question

Then please read the article Uber's International 'Launch Playbook:

In 2011, when Uber first took its car service app abroad, the company made its Paris debut an all-consuming event. From headquarters in San Francisco, Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick personally hired and oversaw the three people running local operations ahead of the service's tense first day online in France. Every one ofUber's then-20 employees studied Parisian cab rates, or neighborhood traffic density, or French transportation laws. These days, things are less frantic. A few hours before Uber's Nov. 12 launch in Budapest, Austin Geidt , the company's head of global expansion, made time to talk through the process at a San Francisco cafe. A $17 billion valuation will do a lot to soothe jangled nerves. Geidt, a 29-year-old with one employer on her resume, helped Uber roll out in a dozen cities two years ago. Now it's adding one every other day. Budapest marked the 100th foreign city on six continents where Uber rides are available and made Hungary the 46th country where it operates. (Uber is in about 140 cities in the U.S.) While Geidt's team used to agonize over data on competition and demand in different cities to decide where to expand next, "At this point we go so quickly, I wouldn't say that it particularly matters," she says. "If we're not there now, we'll be there in a week." Geidt oversees what Uber calls its "launch playbook," a list of business strategies and operating guidelines that have been compiled by an internal team of about 40 employees. It doesn't cover everything: During a Nov. 14 dinner with New York journalists on the guest list, Uber's senior vice president for business, Emil Michael, suggested the company spend $1 million to hire a team of researchers that would target critical reporters. And Uber said on Nov. 18 that it was investigating Josh Mohrer, the head of its New York office, for tracking rides taken by a BuzzFeed reporter. The playbook includes a blueprint for expansion that begins with three people, mostly locals, in each new city: a marketer, someone to recruit drivers, and a general manager who deals with area authorities and competitors and reports to Geidt. Despite the consistent regimen, she says she tries to view each city operation as its own startup.

That has to change when one ofUber's foreign teams screws up. A brief international public-relations crisis ensued in October, when the Lyon (France) office ran a promotion offering customers a ride with an "incredibly hot chick." The trouble blew over after executives from San Francisco stepped in to stop the ad campaign. In India, Uber's biggest market outside the U.S., the central bank threatened to shut it down for skirting cybersecurity regulations by routing payments through a foreign subsidiary. The company announced in a Nov. 12 blog post that it would comply with Indian laws by hiring Paytm, a local mobile payments business, to set up virtual wallets for Indian users. It's been tougher for Uber to deal with local regulators and labor groups complaining that the company operates as an unlicensed taxi service and drains money from their transportation markets. Taxi drivers organized antiUber protests this summer that blocked streets in London and Western European cities. In the past six months, governments in Australia, Belgium, Germany, and the Philippines have instituted short-lived bans on the service or levied stiff fines on its drivers. Cabbies barricaded the door at the party celebrating Uber's Milan debut. Geidt says governments "are very hesitant to see us come, often. We're a big enough brand now that they catch on to us being there quicker than they used to." Geidt noticed Uber's smartphone app shortly after its launch in 2010, when it was a black-car service confined to San Francisco. "I loved the idea," she says, even though "I was probably too poor to be an actual customer." Having just earned a B.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley, she e-mailed then-CEO Ryan Graves and scored an internship in the marketing department. Later she helped set up and eventually run Uber's first satellite operation, in New York. "She bounced around quickly enough that, all of a sudden, she was doing all parts of the operations in the city," says Graves, now head of global operations. Soon, Geidt was opening Uber offices across the U.S. She invited Boston cabbies to the Harvard Business School library, where she held recruitment meetings while posing as a student to get a free desk and Wi-Fi. She spent the night at a tow yard in Austin, Texas, paying fines for drivers to retrieve cars impounded in a police sting that targeted unlicensed taxis.

Since taking on international expansion in 2012, Geidt has focused much of her attention on Asia. Last year, CEO Kalanick summoned her and his other lieutenants to Beijing, where they worked for two weeks to hone their plan for China, from business structure and licenses to map data and the most popular forms of payment. "Everyone we talked to said, 'You should take four years to really research China, ' " recalls Geidt. "And we said, 'No, let's just go.'" Uber drivers have begun to roam seven cities on the mainland this year and will add several more soon, says regional manager Candice Lo. Uber couldn't afford to wait. China already has two dominant taxi-booking apps, each backed by one of the country's two biggest Internet companies, Tencent (700:HK) and Alibaba (BABA). It also faces fresh competition in the U.S., where Lyft has been slashing its prices to undercut the company. "We plan to expand internationally, but the U.S. is the biggest opportunity right now," says Lyft CEO Logan Green. To fuel expansion abroad, Uber is in talks to raise $1 billion on top of the $1.2 billion it announced in June, according to two people familiar with the fundraising who weren't authorized to discuss it publicly. "Pretty soon we're going to have more cities outside of the U.S. than inside, and we want to make big bets going forward to make sure that we're able to continue to roll out and invest in these global cities," says Kalanick, who won't confirm the new round of fundraising. Local opposition notwithstanding, the ultimate aim is even grander, says Geidt: "We really do intend to be everywhere."

Write a 500 Word document responding to the following questions:

Why is Uber choosing to expand so rapidly?

Are there first-mover advantages for this business?

Are there any downsides to being a first mover in this business?

How sustainable are any advantages in this business?

Answer 1

What started as a luxury car service way back in 2009 in San Francisco is now valued as a multi-billion dollar company with operations in more than 100 cities around the world. Uber, with its young and vibrant team has an ambitious nature to reach out to as many cities as possible as it has identified the need when it comes to cab-hailing. In the past, hailing a cab has always been a nightmare, with adverse weather conditions and the pro-longed wait for a taxi from the local taxi dispatch. This obvious need was prevalent not only in the US but also for commuters around the globe. The additional shortcomings of dealing in cash and specifying the exact location were an added burden which Uber aimed to do away with, primarily through a technology platform. Uber aims to transform the private transportation in several key ways – incorporation of Google maps, driver’s information and details and a seamless payment method without any hassle at the drop point. It has always been an advocate for early adoption and this philosophy was reinforced by their first launch in San Francisco, famous for its spotty cab service. All these new adopters took to blogging and social media to tell their friends of this new way to ride. This indeed was a tipping point for Uber to reach out to all individuals across the globe to meet this evident need. However, different cultures and countries had different regulations and rules to abide with, hence Uber maintains a dedicated team to refer to the “Launch playbook” and tailor the offering as per the local needs and requirements.

This certainly gives Uber a first-mover advantage in whichever geography they plan to expand to. No doubt there is a need for such a service in the new city, the early adopters with their positive feedback and views help Uber to create a recognition in the space. An image of a pioneer in the industry, disrupting the cab-hailing space with convenience at the customer’s fingertip. The technology platform was easy to use and helped more and more people to join the bandwagon. Other competitors coming up would then be considered as a follower in the space, with nothing proprietary in their offering.

Indeed there are a few downsides of being the first mover. All regulations and government policies, which were non-existential before the arrival of Uber, comes up as a deterrent for Uber’s smooth operations. The guidelines of all app-enabled cab service is laid down after this, which is an advantage to players who launch a little later. They are well-prepared to deal with the new government regulations and against any back-clashes from the local taxi service providers.

Primarily, the only evident sustainable advantage in this business is the technology platform, which is well protected with Intellectual rights. The technology platform is the seamless way which connects riders to the drivers, the better the user interface and speed, the better the experience for either parties. It is the face of the offering, Uber has been effective in making the platform as user-friendly as possible and also has been innovating on it, to improve it further.