DRIVE A2B April 2018

Uber’s retreat from Southeast Asia
makes India, the Middle East and Latin
America the next battlegrounds.
By Johana Bhuiyan
While the Grab deal in Singapore was in part an
admission that the company couldn’t compete
with its homegrown rival, it was also a sort of
call to arms in markets like India, Latin America
and the Middle East.
So what does Uber have to do?
Each region requires a different strategy.
Through its three international exits (China,
Singapore, Russia) the company has learned
it’s not enough to throw cash at a market and
hope that the strategy that helped it grow in
the U.S. will work elsewhere. The primary thing
Uber has to do is to become more attuned to
the local nuances of the market.
Uber is whittling down the
international markets it operates
in, so it can focus on core regions it
feels like it can win.
IRELAND - taxi owners need to
change the vehicle at 10 years.
It appears that it’s becoming a lot tougher to be a
successful and profitable taxi driver in Letterkenny,
Ireland.
“Things are getting harder. The Government brought
in things like the ‘10-year-old rule’, meaning every time
your car reaches 10 years, you have to get a newer one”,
says a taxi driver.
“Fuel’s gone up, insurance costs have gone up. I know
drivers whose insurance has soared from €1,200 to
€2,400.”
“You are legally obliged to issue a receipt and you can’t
issue a receipt if you don’t have your meter on. You can
get fined for not running a meter.”
Drivers don’t always charge the full metered taxi fare,
but nonetheless they are still required to have the meter
running for the duration of the trip, so the passenger
can view the fare.
• It’s a fine of €60 for not having the meter operating.
• If a fare is charged more than the metered fare it’s a
fine of up to €4,000.
• Failure to offer and print receipt is a €40 fine.
SOUTHEAST ASIA - Uber is officially
exiting this region.
Uber is officially exiting Southeast Asia. The
ride-hail company has agreed to sell its regional
business to its primary competitor, Grab.
The sale price wasn’t disclosed, but as part of
the deal, Uber will be getting a 27.5 percent stake
in the company, described as worth “several
billion dollars” by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
in an email sent to employees. He will also be
joining Grab’s board.
Grab, backed by SoftBank and former Uber
competitor Didi, will also inherit 500 Uber
employees across the region, according to an
email Khosrowshahi sent to staff.
Grab has raised more than $4 billion to date and
was last valued at $6 billion. Beyond its car and
taxi-hailing services, the company also has a
payments platform called GrabPay and recently
launched a financial services platform. As part
of the merger, Grab will also be acquiring Uber’s
food-delivery business, UberEats, in Southeast
Asia.
This is the third major market Uber has exited
through a deal of this kind. In August 2016,
China-based ride-hail behemoth Didi acquired
Uber’s business in the country. In July 2017,
Uber also pulled its operations out of Russia by
merging with top competitor Yandex Taxi.
The complexities of operating in Southeast Asia
are often underplayed. The region is composed
of eight countries with distinct markets and
economies. In other words, what works in
Singapore may not always work in Vietnam and
vice versa.
In Singapore, for example, Grab offers 11 distinct
services to consumers — like GrabNow which
allows a rider to hail a cab off the street and
then connect their app with the driver to book a
ride — and just six in Vietnam. In Vietnam, on the
other hand, Grab operates a motorcycle-hailing
service called GrabBike that is not available in
Singapore.
DRIVE A2B magazine · April 2018
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