You have probably heard of Uber.
There aren’t many companies that come over with energy and bravery enough to challenge the NSW Government and even win.This is how it started. In summary, the two co-founders were really experienced entrepreneurs:• Garrett Camp (Originator of StumbleUpon)• Travis Kalanick (Co-founder Ruddy Swoosh)Back in 2008, both Garrett and Travis were fair companions without any idea they would be running one of the world’s most efficient new businesses. Standing in the rain after a conference in Paris, they complained how annoying it was to discover a taxi when none came by.By January 2010, Uber did their to start with test run in New York with only 3 cars cruising in the city.
A few months later, Uber started authorised in San Francisco and taken a toll 1.5 times more than a cab! Their USP was that anyone could get a car at any time in San Francisco by only clicking a button.How did they do it?Early Adopter Promotion – They built a honest and great relationship with clients and spread the word by supporting tech occasions and giving free rides to clients. They knew that customers of these occasions had more possibilities to attempt Uber, were well regarded and more likely to share it through social media, technical press and with friends.Uber was solving a real problem and had real customers who in real experienced the same problem as Garrett and Travis.
Uber focused on the needs of the customer and not the features of its product when it started.But, the rise of uber has shown signs of disruption for the existence of taxi in majority of the cases. In Paris where taxi drivers have blocked roads in protest against Uber. Undoubtedly there will be ongoing arguments around the legality and safety of these services, Uber will continue to grow in popularity for the simple reason that they provide a customer experience that better show passengers increasing expectations if compared to traditional taxi firms.The taxi industry has been suffered for disruption for many years – the market in most major cities is usually some form of oligopoly due to the regular environment and the high cost of licensing. It is clear that taxi firms have been under much pressure to develop their customer value proposition, a condition that mostly arises from an industry that has little or no competition at all.Looking at the service provided by traditional taxi firms, we can start to categorize the points of their existing offering:An average level of offering for many areas such as: price, speed to pickup, cleanliness of cars, driver experience, ease of payment etc.A high level of offering for other areas such as: extra services (wheelchair access, child seats etc.) and also local knowledge of drivers etc.Uber recognised some of the elements that were missing from their offering as well:Tracking of location: no sharing of driver locations with prospective customersPayment online: disjointed approach to accepting anything other than cashFeedback: less opportunity for customers to provide or assess driver feedbackIn conclusion usage of Taxi has been comfortable for the customers for decades having all the advantages listed above.Uber , on the other hand has advantages for places where the presence of taxis are low.Therefore the rise of uber , in addition to shown disruption for the taxi industry has lower advantages than the taxi industry .
