Sitting in his glass-walled office in Berlin with an open suit jacket, casually tieless, Christoph Weigler looks every bit the part of a Silicon Valley startup executive. But the Uber general manager for Germany isn\u2019t talking about dominance or disruption. Weigler instead prefers discussing rules and regulations: \u201cCompanies in general need to abide by them.\u201dAs for Uber\u2019s famously brash tactics, he said, \u201cIt was very obvious that was not the way we could succeed here.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the ride-hailing giant prepares for an initial public offering next year, Uber is gearing up to tell investors that much of its growth will come from food delivery, self-driving cars and scooters. Uber Technologies Inc.\u2019s core business of moving passengers in people\u2019s carshas largely plateaued. In most major markets around the world, it has eitherwon or retreated. But thanks to a more diplomatic approach pioneered by Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi, there are a few markets that hold newly tantalizing possibilities.<\/p>\n
Three countries in particular now appear to make up a kind of final frontier for the company\u2019s original business. The first is Germany, where Uber\u2019speer-to-peer service has been banned for three years.By embracing regulated black cars and taxis, Uber has recently begun to thrive in Munich and Berlin,made its way back into D\u00fcsseldorf and is planning to add more next year. On Monday, the country\u2019s Transportation Ministry saidit\u2019s considering easing regulations to allow carpooling by 2021.Another untapped market is Japan, where ride-hailing companieshave failed to make a dent in the taxi market. And the third is Argentina, currently in the grips of an economic crisis, and where regulations no longer mean as much as they once did.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe we\u2019ll be able to build a larger presence in Germany, which has the largest GDP in Europe, and Japan, the largest taxi market in the world,\u201d Khosrowshahi said in aninterview at Uber\u2019s headquarters in San Francisco. The strategy, he said, would require \u201ccertain changes in our business model,\u201dhe said, as well as a \u201ccombination of patience and working constructively with authorities\u201d all muscles the company is still just learning to flex.<\/p>\n
Only a few years ago, Uber\u2019s unlicensed service was blacklisted in Germany. In March 2015, a German court banned the company\u2019s unlicensed peer-to-peer service, called UberPop, the equivalent of UberX in the US.<\/p>\n
Now, in Germany, the company is striking a very different tone. It\u2019s learning to make friendlier political overtures. And it\u2019s working to improve its reputation by promising electric bikes and electric cars in a country that is eager to cut down on pollution from its diesel-guzzling cars all while it pushes for federal ride-hailing regulation.<\/p>\n
The result has been slow progress. It is still illegal for regular unlicensed drivers to pick up passengers. But the company now offers a black car service in Munich and Berlin especially popularamong international travelers. And it launched in another major city,Dusseldorf,in October. The company has plans to offer servicein several other German cities next year.<\/p>\n
Thomas Mohnke, managing director of limousine service SafeDriver Group, is one of Uber\u2019s biggest partners in the region. He said his black car drivers once chauffeuredmembers of parliament until officials decided to rely on government drivers instead. Mohnke and his fleet were in a lurch until Uber came around. Hundreds of hisdrivers are now working with the company.<\/p>\n
\u201cGerman mentality is different,\u201d Mohnke said of Uber\u2019s early travails in the country. \u201cGerman mentality is we never give you a chance if you don\u2019t follow the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reward for breaking into the German market would be big. Goldman Sachs estimates the country\u2019staxi market is worth $4 billion, according to a2017 report. But that pales in comparison to Japan, the company\u2019s other area of focus, where the taxi business is estimated to be worth $15 billion.<\/p>\n
Unlike, say, China or Southeast Asia where Uber has been unable to make inroads because of fierce local competitors, Japan effectively shut out the entire ride-hailing industry. Even today, few tech companies have had even the smallest glimmer of success at launching transportation businesses.<\/p>\n
But lately, Uber has reason to be optimistic about the country. The company launched its food delivery service in Japan in 2016, after years of struggling to enter the Japanese market at all. It quickly became one of the most popular food delivery options in the country.<\/p>\n
Ride-hailing proved more challenging, but in February the company got its first break. Ina meeting with Khosrowshahi,Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo AbesaidUber should considerintroducing its service on Awaji Island, a popular tourist destination. Uber leapt at the opportunity and partnered with a local taxi service there. The company then struck another partnership with a taxi service in Nagoyaand was able to launch in Japan\u2019s fourth-most-populous urban area.<\/p>\n
\u201cJapan always stood out to us as the single biggest of the opportunities and one where we just did not have traction like we needed to,\u201d said Brooks Entwistle, Uber\u2019s head of Asia. Soon, the company hopes, that could change. Said Entwistle:\u201cWe are going around methodically striking deals.\u201d<\/p>\n
The regulatory challenges are even thornier in Uber\u2019s third country of focus, Argentina. But those challenges became less pressing when the country\u2019s economy began to spiral. As unemployment rose, would-be drivers started flocking to the platform looking for work.<\/p>\n
Recently, even though the country has no clear ride-hailing rules, Buenos Aires became the fastest-growing city for Uber in terms of trips of anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n
Uber didn\u2019t enter the Argentinian market for years because of restrictive money-transfer laws that would have made it hard to turn a profit. Those laws were repealed in 2015, and Uber debutedin the capital city shortly after. But the company hadnot expanded in the country outside of Buenos Aires, facing hostile regulations and an entrenched taxi industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cBuenos Aires has the most of what we call \u2018driver-first trips,\u2019\u201d said Mariano Otero, the general manager for Argentina and neighboring countries. That means a lot of drivers are trying out Uber. The company sees this as laying a groundwork for future expansion in Argentina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sitting in his glass-walled office in Berlin with an open suit jacket, casually tieless, Christoph Weigler looks every bit the part of a Silicon Valley startup executive. But the Uber general manager for Germany isn\u2019t talking about dominance or disruption. Weigler instead prefers discussing rules and regulations: \u201cCompanies in general need to abide by them.\u201dAs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47868,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47866\/revisions\/47868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}