Heena Sharma Blog

Uber Technologies Inc's ride service bookings slowly recovered in recent weeks as the company expects a coronavirus -related slowdown will delay the goal of becoming profitable by a matter of quarters, not years, Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said on Thursday. He spoke after Uber reported it had seen encouraging signs in markets hit by the pandemic and posted a 14% rise in revenue for the first quarter, supported by a jump in food-delivery orders at its Uber Eats business. Read More

Uber on Tuesday announced the sale of its food delivery business in India to Zomato in an all-stock deal. Uber will get a 9.9 per cent stake in Zomato as part of the deal whose size has not been disclosed. The deal for Uber Eats, which operates in 41 cities, was signed at 3 am, and its customers will be shifted to the Zomato app from 7 am. The deal is applicable only in India and Uber Eats will continue to operate in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. According to sources the deal value is around $300- 350 million. “ We are proud to have pioneered restaurant discovery and to have created a leading food delivery business across more than 500 cities in India. This acquisition significantly strengthens our position in the category,” said Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato. Sources said the move is part of Uber’s strategy to be either number one or two in each of their businesses in every country they operate. In India, Uber Eats grew very quickly to take a 12 per cent share of the food...

A day after Zomato snubbed a customer who refused an order from a non-Hindu rider, #ZomatoUninstalled trended on Twitter on Thursday, with many accusing the online food delivery platform of bias. # BoycottUberEats also caught on after UberEats backed its rival’s “Food has no religion” comment. Even as the incident had social media divided, the Jabalpur police in Madhya Pradesh sought an undertaking from the Zomato customer that he would not spread religious hatred. The controversy began on Tuesday when a Zomato customer tweeted: “Just cancelled an order on @ZomatoIN they allocated a non-Hindu rider for my food they said they can't change rider and can't refund on cancellation. I said you can't force me to take a delivery. I don't want don't refund just cancel.” In response, the official Twitter handle of Zomato tweeted, “Food doesn’t have a religion. It is a religion.” Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal tweeted: “We are proud of the idea of India — and the...

Uber Technologies Inc. envisions taking to the skies with a fleet of food-delivery drones in as little as three years, an ambitious timeline for a ride-hailing company that would face numerous technical challenges and regulatory hurdles. The San Francisco company is seeking an operations executive who can help make delivery drones functional as soon as next year and commercially operational in multiple markets by 2021, according to a job posting that appeared on Uber’s website. App-reliant Uber has limited experience developing hardware beyond its nascent electric scooters and its equipment for self-driving vehicles, an as-yet unproven technology. The drone executive will “enable safe, legal, efficient and scalable flight operations,” according to the job listing, which refers to UberExpress, an internal name used for the drone delivery operation within its UberEats prepared-food delivery unit. After an inquiry from The Wall Street Journal, Uber removed the job list...