Uber Technologies

Uber develops, markets, and operates a ride-sharing mobile application that allows consumers to submit a trip request. Uber develops, markets, and operates a ridesharing mobile application that allows consumers to submit a trip request that is routed to crowd-sourced partner drivers. Its smartphone application connects drivers with people who need a ride. 

Its application enables users to arrange and schedule transportation and/or logistics services with third-party providers. They take on big problems to help drivers, riders, delivery partners, and eaters get moving in more than 600 cities around the world. It also provides Windows Phone App, iPhone App, Blackberry App, and Android App. 

Uber serves customers in North, Central, and South Americas as well as Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific Garrett Camp, Oscar Salazar, and Travis Kalanick founded Uber Cab in March 2009 became Uber Technologies in October 2010, with its headquarters in San Francisco in California and an engineering centre in Bengaluru in India as well as a regional office in Singapore.

2010: In February 2010, Ryan Graves became the first Uber employee, receiving the job by responding to a post on Twitter. The service launched in late May, 2010 with just a handful of drivers and customers. In 2010, when the company was still UberCab, they unveiled a logo that featured a red “UC” with the company’s name above the logo. In early 2010, UberCab's service was first tested in New York with just 3 cabs.

2011: By 2011, the job of securing investment was much easier. The first national expansion of Uber Cab came in the year 2011, which lead the entire of New York to witness the presence of Uber. In 2011, the company changed its name from UberCab to Uber after complaints from San Francisco taxicab operators.

2012: In April 2012, Uber launched a service in Chicago, whereby users were able to request a regular taxi or an Uber driver via its mobile app. In July 2012, the company introduced UberX, a cheaper option that allowed drivers to use non-luxury vehicles, including their personal vehicles, subject to a background check, insurance, registration, and vehicle standards. It was in 2012 that the Uber logo got its first major overhaul.

2013: Travis Kalanick has been working on introducing driverless cars to the Uber mix since 2013.

2014: In August 2014, Uber launched a shared transport service in the San Francisco Bay Area. In early 2014, Kalanick hired former Amazon executive Jeff Holden as product development manager. In 2014, Uber began working on Big Data Generation 1. In early 2014, Uber faced the fact that given their trip growth —roughly 20% per month—the solution for storing trips was going to run out of steam, both in terms of storage volume and IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) by the end of the year. Uber had started operations in China in 2014, under the name (Yubù).

2015: In March 2015, Uber acquired mapping startup deCarta. Around early 2015, Uber’s now deprecated tool for application-layer sharding, called Ringpop, incorporated Riak for high availability. In mid-2015, Uber created a solution for both iOS and Android in a platform-agnostic test runner called Octopus. Around 2015, the growing use of Uber’s data exposed limitations in the ETL and Vertica-centric setup, not to mention the increasing costs. “As our company grew, scaling our data warehouse became increasingly expensive. In mid-2015, Uber began exploring ways to scale ML across the organization, avoiding ML anti-patterns while standardizing workflows and tools.

2016: In August 2016, facing tough competition, Uber sold its operations in China to DiDi in exchange for an 18% stake in DiDi. On September 14, 2016, it launched self-driving cars in Pittsburgh using a fleet of Ford Fusion cars and on December 14, 2016, it began testing self-driving Volvo XC90 SUVs in San Francisco. By the beginning of 2016, Uber was on a more even keel. Today, Uber operates in 300 cities across 6 continents, and in 2016 Uber grossed $20 billion. In 2016, though, the Uber logo underwent another major overhaul, this time ditching the “U” and the company name entirely. In 2016, Uber acquired Ottomotto, a self-driving truck company, for $625 million.

2017: App building startup Complex Polygon got acquired by Uber in July 2017. However, in 2017, Kalanick exited Uber owing to certain controversies.

2018: In February 2018, Uber combined its operations in Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan with those of Yandex.Taxi and invested $225 million in the venture. In November 2018, Uber became a gold member of the Linux Foundation. Uber restarted testing in December 2018 after receiving local approval in Pittsburgh and Toronto.

2019: Uber acquired Careem, which was its competitor in the Middle East, in March 2019. Uber went public on May 9th, 2019, and Uber's stock is one of the best performers on the NYSE. In October 2019, in partnership with HeliFlight, Uber offered 8-minute helicopter flights between Manhattan and John F. Kennedy International Airport for $200-$225 per passenger. In October 2019, Uber launched Uber Works to connect workers who wanted temporary jobs with businesses. The app was initially available only in Chicago and expanded to Miami in December 2019. Uber's cab services occupied a whopping 67% market share in the United States in 2019.

2020: On May 5, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Uber announced plans to layoff 3,700 employees, around 14% of its workforce. On May 18, 2020, 3,000 more job cuts and 45 office closures were announced. In June 2020, Uber announced that it would manage the on-demand high-occupancy vehicle fleet for Marin Transit, a public bus agency in Marin County, California. In July 2020, Uber in partnership with its majority-owned Cornershop, launched Uber grocery delivery service in Latin America, Canada, Miami, and Dallas. However, the company announced work from home for the employees till December 2020. In December 2020, Uber sold its Elevate division, which was developing short flights using VTOL aircraft, to Joby Aviation. Uber Eats increased revenues by over 200% in 2020.

2021: In October 2021, Uber acquired Drizly, an alcohol delivery service, for $1.1 billion in cash and stock. Uber's revenues in Q4 2021 was recorded at $5.78 bn, which increased by 83% when compared with the revenues the company received in the same quarter of the previous fiscal.

2022: On January 20, 2022, Uber acquired Australian carsharing company Car Next Door. Uber India has resumed its initiative of adding Mumbai's iconic kaali-peeli taxis on its platform, as per the news dated April 9, 2022. Uber has a huge base of over 93 million monthly active users, as of 2022.

According to Uber, the company published its mission statement to be: "to make transportation as reliable as running water everywhere, for everyone".

As stated in company website, Uber’s vision is: “to reimagine the way the world moves for the better".