Uber:

Big Data
Kevish Shah, Omer Reshid,
Zhan Su, Ismail Ndiaye
Overview of Uber
- Uber was founded in 2009 in San Francisco
which was the launch city
- Began as a ride-hailing service for top
executives
- Expanding into food and alcohol delivery,
sustainable transport
Available on Apple and Android
- $72 billion global market value
- Completed 5 billion rides (40 million a
month in the US alone)
- 75 million users worldwide
- 3 million drivers worldwide
Leader in ride-hailing services
Business Model
- Uber is a business-to-consumer
e-commerce organization
- Middleman in a simple supply (drivers and
their cars) and demand (riders) economies
to scale
- Expand into new markets
- Continuously innovate and collect data to
analyze new innovative solutions to issues
- Acquire the competition directly or adopt
their practices
Value Proposition
Driver
- Easy to track rides, income, times, and any other
important data
- Rating system to get safe, respectful riders
- Flexible work schedule
- Incentives during surge pricing
- Constant rides being requested
- Multiple rides at once (Uber Pool)
- In-app mapping with algorithm that provides
fastest route
Rider
- Track rides, points, spending
- Safety features like driver/car info, passcodes,
profile pictures
- Estimated times
- Uber Pool, Uber Black, Uber XL, etc.
- Easy payment system
- Rewards system
- Rides available 24/7 within a few minutes
- Rating system will match them good drivers
Why Uber dominates Big Data
- Big Data: composed of high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety
information assets
- Uber has 100+ petabytes worth of data in data warehouses (1 petabyte
= 1 million gigabytes)
- Data stored in centralized
locations seen in the next slide
- Engineers are able to leverage
this data using complex
algorithms to create
industry-leading visualizations
- Historical data is saved from the
billions of rides completed
Distributed Processing
- Entire computer systems dedicated to analyzing their data
efficiently, effectively, and at fast speeds
- Connected in the same LAN network
- Require large bandwidths (maximum rate at which data
can transfer)
- Algorithms runs parallel to maximize efficiency
- Processing is split up into different tasks
- Every computer has its own algorithm to compute
certain data
- Results from all computers are then merged to
provide the services of Uber
Use of IT/IS Solutions
- MySQL: formatted databases
- Much simpler than PostgreSQL
- Easier to replicate, transfer data
- More efficient
- Riak: analysis and storage technology used in
conjunction with MySQL
- Redis: used for real-time analytics,
sub-millisecond latency
- CRM system is huge part of Uber’s success
- Storage services like Hadoop house all data on
a cloud-based service

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Data Management
Competition
Lyft:
Uber has First-mover advantage; Uber has more market share (60% in
US), capital, resources; Lyft only operates in U.S. and Canada.

DiDi:
Uber plays on an international stage, while DiDi is nearly a pure Chinese
company, focuses more on affordable rides
In 2016, DiDi purchased Uber China.

Careem:
Largest ride-hailing in the Middle East. In 2020, Uber completed the
acquisition of Careem.

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Uber’s Competitive Advantage
- Uses the large amounts of data to create algorithms for new features
- Uber Pool:
- Double the amount of data one ride requires and finds fastest route within seconds
- Price surging
- When demand exceeds supply, prices increase to incentivize more drivers to come out and
less users to request rides
- Data visualizations that give insights on which insights into which markets to enter
- Brand awareness: the name Uber has become a verb, recognized by millions.
- Contributions to public safety.
- Diversification:
- Uber Eats: ~25% market share in the food delivery industry
- Bought $2.65 billion in stock of Postmates
- Drizly: alcohol delivery service acquired for $1.1 billion
Risks & Challenges
- Data Security: SQL databases are not the most secure, so they
must invest heavily into protecting it
- Invasive Data Collection: Uber collects personal, banking, GPS
location, vehicle, driver information
- People have called Uber out for this method of collection
- Physical safety: Interior camera to protect drivers and riders, but
this may threaten privacy.
- Pandemics: Revenues declined 16% YoY.
- Laws/Regulations: Lots of contention about the drivers being
labeled as independent contractors rather than employees
- Autonomous Vehicles: Self-driving taxis are being introduced, so
Uber will be faced with a tough decision in the future.

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