Uber's highest investor advises the car-booking company to focus on the US and Europe markets

desmond frimpong

January 23, 2018 12:24 PM

This move people believe would end Ubers’ original vision of building a transport service “everywhere, for everyone”.

Uber must focus on recovering market share in the US and grow in key European markets, that is an advice coming from the company biggest investor; SoftBank.

Rajeev Misra, a board director of Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank — which became Uber’s biggest shareholder on Thursday, with the formal closing of a $9.3bn investment — told the Financial Times that the transportation group had a faster path to profitability if it returned to its core markets such as the US, Europe, Latin America and Australia.

He explains that uber moving out of unprofitable countries will not just cut its losses, which hit $1.5bn in the third quarter of 2017, but that growth prospects were more promising in its core markets.

“This is a growth company, this is not just about them cutting their losses,” he said. “Who cares if they lost a billion more or half a billion less?”

Uber had already started exiting some of its biggest emerging markets towards the end of the tenure of Travis Kalanick, the company’s controversial chief executive who was ousted in June. It sold its China business to rival Didi Chuxing in 2016 and merged its Russia business with local technology group Yandex shortly after Mr. Kalanick’s departure.

However, Uber is still locked in expensive wars of attrition in India with local rival Ola and in Southeast Asia with Grab and lost market share in the US to rival Lyft last year.

SoftBank is already a major investor in several of Uber’s competitors — holding a 20 percent stake in Didi, and a 30 percent share of Grab — and its backing of the US company will complete its collection of ride-hailing themed investments.

desmond frimpong