Uber in China: Driving in the Gray Zone

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Uber in China: Driving in the Gray Zone For the exclusive use of I. Suarez, 2020. 9-316-135 REV: MAY 2, 2016 WILLIAM C. KIRBY JOYCELYN W. EBY SHUANG L. FROST ADAM K. FROST Uber in China: Driving in the Gray Zone For the China entrepreneur, competing is not for the faint of heart. We at Uber pride ourselves on being fierce and principled competitors—we plan to succeed by continuing to win the hearts and minds of riders and drivers with a superior product experience. — Travis Kalanick, Letter to Investors, June 2015 On September 23, 2015, a group of the world’s wealthiest technology industry leaders gathered in Seattle, Washington, to shake hands with the President of China. The event, the 8th US-China Internet Industry Forum, was a way for President Xi Jinping to demonstrate publicly the Chinese government’s support for firms that were revolutionizing traditional industries with Internet technologies.a After the meeting, a group photograph was taken of President Xi surrounded by 30 CEOs, whose companies had a combined market capitalization of $2.5 trillion. This “$2.5 trillion photo” included not only industry heavyweights such as Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft; Virginia Rometty, Chairman of IBM; and Jack Ma, Executive Chairman of Alibaba, but also leaders of some of the most prominent “sharing economy” companies, such as Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb and Cheng Wei, CEO of Didi-Kuaidi, China’s leading taxi- and private car-hailing app. However, there were also a handful of players conspicuously absent from the photo: chief among them was Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber.1b This did not bode well for Uber’s future in China. Travis Kalanick had steered his company through five years of remarkable growth, its valuation greatly surpassing that of Facebook in Facebook’s early years. What began as a local limousine rental service in 2010 had, by 2015, grown into a transnational business empire stretching across 374 cities in 68 countries. In December 2015, Uber sought its single largest round of venture capital: $2.1 billion. This funding would bring Uber’s market valuation up to $62.5 billion, more than five times the total annual revenue of the US taxi and limousine industry in 2014. However, the future success of the firm depended in part on its ability to continue to expand in developing markets. And no market was larger or growing more quickly than that of China. a This visit, part of Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States as President of the People’s Republic of China, bolstered China’s new the “Internet Plus” policy announced by Li Keqiang in March, 2015. b Although Uber reported that Kalanick did attend several events during Xi's visit, Uber’s CEO did not appear in the group photograph, nor was his name on the invitation lists. HBS Professor William C. Kirby, Research Associate Joycelyn W. Eby, and Doctoral Students Shuang L. Frost and Adam K. Frost (Harvard University) prepared this case. This case was developed from published sources. Funding for the development of this case was provided by Harvard Business School and not by the company. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management. Copyright © 2016 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to www.hbsp.harvard.edu. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, or transmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School. This document is authorized for use only by Irene Suarez in 2020Sp: Global Strategic Management taught by TSUHSIANG HSU, Niagara University from Jan 2020 to May 2020. For the exclusive use of I. Suarez, 2020. 316-135 Uber in China: Driving in the Gray Zone Since early 2015, China’s 800 million-person urban transportation market had been the site of Uber’s fiercest battles. Kalanick had led a strategy of aggressive expansion in China, but his company had encountered numerous challenges, including fierce competition from domestic rivals, incompatibilities with local market demands, rampant fraud, and uphill regulatory struggles. Despite the obstacles, Kalanick remained personally dedicated to advancing Uber’s position in China; he once jokingly commented that he had stayed in the country for so long that someone had suggested he apply for Chinese citizenship.2 Despite Kalanick’s sustained efforts in 2015, Uber failed to gain the kind of dominant market share in China that it enjoyed in other markets around the world. Estimates of the company’s total share of the Chinese ride-hailing market ranged from 11 to 30 percent. The majority of business had been captured by native firms, which had entered the market before Uber and offered a wider array of transportation services. Yet even with its comparatively weak market position, four out of Uber’s top ten cities by the number of rides hailed per day were already in China, including its top city in the world, Chengdu. A central part of the firm’s 2016 growth strategy was to expand into more than 100 new Chinese cities. China was too important for Uber to lose. But doing business in the country also brought with it unique difficulties in terms of product localization, competition, and regulation. “China is so different from the rest of the world,” Kalanick explained.3 “You must come in humble if you are not from China.” Kalanick knew that the battle for Chinese markets would do much to determine the future shape of the company. But how could Uber successfully negotiate its legal position with both the central and local governments? Would Uber, a company used to operating with the advantages of early market entry and superior technology, be able to overcome competition from strong domestic rivals? The Founding and Growth of Uber The idea for Uber was born in the winter of 2008, when Travis Kalanick and his friend Garret Camp were waiting in the snow outside of Paris, trying unsuccessfully to hail a taxi into the city. Cold and frustrated, they swore that together they would solve this problem. They made a pact to create an app that would revolutionize on-demand transportation by fundamentally restructuring the way people interact with taxis. Their idea was simple: tap a button, get a cab. This was no idle fantasy. Kalanick and Camp were experienced entrepreneurs on a warpath. Camp had just sold StumbleUpon, a major web-discovery engine he had built from the ground up, to Ebay for $75 million, while Kalanick had sold his content delivery platform Red Swoosh to Akamai Technologies for $20 million. Kalanick and Camp used these payouts to found their new company: Ubercab, later shortened to Uber. In June 2010, the Uber app was first launched in San Francisco. Though initially its services cost 50% more than traditional taxis, it quickly gained popularity because of its ease of use.4 A few months later, Kalanick and Camp successfully raised $1.25 million in funding from angel investors. In 2013, Google Ventures invested $258 million in Uber’s Series C funding round, which pushed the company’s valuation up to $3.76 billion. After closing a $1 billion round of new funding in 2015, Uber surpassed Xiaomi, China’s largest smart-phone company valued at $45 billion, and reclaimed its position as the most valuable start-up in the world. (See Exhibit 1 for a chart of Uber’s fundraising rounds and major investors.) Steady increases in funding allowed Uber to expand both the geographic reach and the nature of its services (see Exhibit 2 for a timeline of Uber’s expansion across the world). In May 2011, Uber launched 2 This document is authorized for use only by Irene Suarez in 2020Sp: Global Strategic Management taught by TSUHSIANG HSU, Niagara University from Jan 2020 to May 2020. For the exclusive use of I. Suarez, 2020. Uber in China: Driving in the Gray Zone 316-135 its platform in New York City. In December of that year it moved into Paris, and by July 2012 it offered rides in London. Around that time, Uber unveiled its most ground-breaking and controversial product: “UberX.” Whereas Uber’s initial services had been provided by black cars (luxury vehicles with drivers specially licensed to provide chauffeur services), this new product allowed ordinary drivers to pick up customers with their private vehicles. UberX quickly became the fastest growing Uber offering.5 By the time of its fifth anniversary, the Uber app allowed customers to choose from a range of transportation options, including the original black cars, as well as ordinary private vehicles (UberX), SUVs, and even traditional taxis. Along with geographic expansion came experimentation in both market-specific and global product offerings. In India, for example, Uber launched an Auto Rickshaw service (though it was later suspended). UberMoto allowed users in Bangkok to hail rides on motorbikes, Uber's nod to one of Bangkok’s primary modes of transportation. Globally, Uber also began to offer a variety of delivery services. In April 2014, the company started UberRUSH which delivered bikes to customers in Manhattan. In January 2015, the company began a logistics operation in Hong Kong called UberCARGO. Later that year, it also launched UberEATS, a food-delivery service piloted in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Barcelona. By December 2014, Uber had 162,037 active drivers operating in 311 cities across the globe. By its fifth anniversary in June 2015, Kalanick boasted of Uber’s 26,000 drivers in New York City, 22,000 in San Francisco, 15,000 in London, and 10,000 in Paris.6 In each of these major cities, the number of Uber drivers had begun to rival the total number of licensed taxis.
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