Uber: ‘We don’t choose cities, cities choose us’

Newsroom 17/04/2015 | 11:48

The local launch of peer-to-peer taxi service Uber was one of the biggest digital events of the spring, generating a high amount of column inches and comments. Rob Khazzam (photo), international launcher at Uber, told BR how the company came to enter the Romanian market and what its plans are.

By Romanita Oprea

Why did you choose this moment for your expansion into Central and Eastern Europe?

CEE is a booming tech hub with a young and innovative population that is quick to adopt new technological innovation. It is also home to millions of cars, as in Bucharest, where approximately 1 million cars are being under-used – not in use for 23 hours a day and only transporting an average of 1.3 people. If we could share and make more efficient use of the existing vehicles, then the same number of people could be transported with 250,000 cars.

How did you choose the order of the country launches (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania)?

Uber is a very data-driven company and our expansion plan is no exception. As a product, Uber is interesting because we don’t choose cities, cities choose us. Our technology allows us to see and measure demand before we even arrive in a city. For example, in Bucharest, thousands of people had already downloaded the app, despite the service not yet being available.

How does Romania integrate into your strategy? What are your hopes for this market for the first year?

As with every entry on a new market, we invested a lot of time and effort into ensuring that we have the best local team on the ground to manage our day-to-day operations for both passengers and drivers. We are still in the early stage with uberX in Bucharest, but the response from our passenger and driver community has been overwhelmingly positive and we look forward to what the future holds for this great city.

Our aim in the Romanian market, as in every market, is to be a reliable, safe and affordable transportation alternative. Currently, our estimated time of arrival in Bucharest is seven minutes and we’re always working to get that number as low as possible so it’s an easy decision to leave your car at home. We see the future less about car ownership and more about car-sharing as smart cities look for smarter solutions to increase mobility while reducing pollution, infrastructure costs and environmental impact.

You have many innovative projects around the world, such as ubericream, KittensOnDemand, WeddingsOnDemand, UberChopper and OnDemand Club Bus.

How do you come up with the ideas?

These ideas are developed by both our marketing team in San Francisco and our local teams on the ground. Each new market represents new opportunities to create great local projects using the Uber network. Recently in Poland, we celebrated Fat Thursday with on-demand doughnuts, using the Uber network to deliver doughnuts across Warsaw and collecting voluntary donations from riders.

Are you considering implementing any of these ideas in Romania or coming up with new ones, based on the specifics of the country?

We’re always looking to create new and exciting stunts for each community catered specifically to their countries. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t like to bring out the old classics such as on-demand roses for Valentine’s Day. A truly global project, roses were delivered via cars on the Uber platform in over 100 cities, including Prague and Budapest.

What is your promotion strategy in Romania?

Our marketing efforts are led entirely by our local team through promotions and partnerships. This means partnering with restaurants, nightlife spots, corporate clients, and festivals as well as Uber-led projects to get Uber to everyone! With Uber in Romania, we want to make sure that everyone has a safe and reliable ride, whether it’s a getting home after a party or an early-morning trip to the office.

Do you intend to launch Uber in other cities around Romania? If so, which ones and when?

Uber’s ambition is to be everywhere – any progressive, forward-thinking city that has a need for safe, reliable and efficient transportation, we want to be there. We pride ourselves on being a part of a broader mobility movement, establishing transportation alternatives, and are always looking for opportunities.

What differences have you noticed so far in the habits and behavior of Uber users in different countries?

New Year’s Eve is one of our busiest nights and we always use it as an opportunity to see how Uber fares around the world. This year, we found that Uber riders in Paris were out the latest, with peak demand at 5am – much later than Sydney, Cape Town, San Francisco or New York. While each market is different, our Uber community is very global with over 20 percent of our passengers using Uber across many cities.

 

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