Marketing Strategy of Uber – Uber Marketing Strategy

Operating in more than 540 cities worldwide Uber have a come a long way in operating as a
cab aggregator from 2009. The company was formerly known as Uber Cab and is founded by
Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp headquartered in San Francisco, United states. It facilitates
a platform for customers for booking cabs at their locations while the app automatically
prompts the nearest Cab driver registered with Uber.

Table of Contents

Segmentation, targeting, positioning in the Marketing strategy of Uber –

Segmentation is the process of dividing the market into the groups of homogeneous
characteristics. Uber uses a mix of demographic and geographic segmentation variables
which helped the company pricing its services accordingly.

Both geographic and demographic segmentation is important because Uber needs to know

which areas to target for customers who are ready to use an “on order transportation service”
over public transport services. You will not find Uber in Rural areas but mainly in urban
areas only where it replaces taxis.  

Differentiating targeting strategy is used by Uber in order to the share of wallet customer

brings in and how to increase wallet size by upselling. If we want to define the type
of differentiation used by Uber, then we can use the terminology “Cost based differentiation”.
Because of the very structure of Uber as a company, there is a huge pricing advantage to the
end customer when they compare Uber taxis vs Publicly available modes of transport.

User benefit based and pricing positioning strategy is used by Uber to attract customers from
different strata of the society. Because day to day travel is a huge cost to customers,
positioning on the basis of Economy makes a huge difference in the mindset of the
customers.

Marketing mix – Here is the Marketing mix of Uber.

SWOT analysis – Here is the SWOT analysis of Uber.
Mission- “To connect people who need a reliable ride with people looking to earn money
driving their car”
Vision- “Not Available”
Tagline-“Where to?”

Competitive advantage in the Marketing strategy of Uber-

Global Presence: Having expertise and experience of operating in more than 70 countries
globally is what making it competitively ahead of its competitors. Its presence in the remotest
areas and easy & timely availability of the services are some of the major factors for its
success.

Broad services portfolio: Its comprehensive range of services namely Uber Go, Uber X,

Uber XL and the most famous and economical one Uber Pool with GPS enabled app-based
tracking system has helped the company in making it convenient to book a cab.

Strategic partnership: It has been tying up with many car manufacturing companies to
jointly produce customised vehicles exclusively for Uber which is giving a competitive
advantage to the company over others. Recently it partnered with Daimler to build
autonomous vehicles which will operate on Uber’s transportation network.
BCG Matrix in the Marketing strategy of Uber –
It operates in 4 segments Uber pool, Uber GO, Uber X, and Uber XL. Its Uber Pool and Uber
GO services are categorized as stars in the BCG matrix because they have a high market
share but at the same time, there is a high growth rate and high competition.

The other two i.e Uber X and Uber XL are question marks in the BCG matrix due to having
low demand and high competition from local and regional players in the segments. If this
segment does not bring in profitability, it will be bookmarked as DOG in the BCG matrix and
might cause more losses then profits to the firm.

Distribution strategy in the Marketing strategy of Uber –

Uber have a fleet of company owned cars, SUV’s and independent vehicles who get
themselves registered  with Uber for being in the business. Uber exclusively tie-up with the
car and vehicles manufacturing companies customising its fleet of cars.

Since the company operate in more than 70 countries and 450+ cities across the globe, they
have developed driving schools to inculcate good driving skills in the drivers who work under
the company’s operational architecture. Because the business right now is booming, there are
many car drivers who are ready to join the business, thereby resulting in an increased
overall distribution presence.

A problem facing Uber is that being in the services sector, several companies have replicated
the same business model as UBER (OLA in India) therefore it is facing striff competition
where distribution of its services is concerned.

Brand value –
Initially, the brand Uber logo was red magnet while it got replaced with the black “U” badge
in a square in the year 2012. Uber has been known for its efficient and reliable transportation
facilities. Uber has a valuation at a whopping $60 billion and

Competitive analysis in the Marketing strategy of Uber-

The industry in which Uber operates is overcrowded with a large number of players, the
primary ones being public transport and the second competition being from small companies
and MNC’s which are eating up each other’s market share in the developing as well as
developed nations.

The unorganised sector of Cab / Taxi services as well as the threat of ever changing
government laws poses a  serious threat to the business of Uber. Some of its competitors in
emerging as well as developed nations are Lyft, Ola cabs etc.

Market analysis in the Marketing strategy of Uber-

Changing lifestyle, global warming, volatility in oil prices, exchange rate, government

regulations, political instability, illiteracy are some of the factors affecting the industry in
which Uber operate in some or other way. 

A majority of the customers of Uber are the working professional and young tech-savvy Gen-
Y who look for the convenience of booking, believe in standard procedures and pre-defined
rates for commuting.
 TOPIC:

COMPANY: UBER CAB SERVICES

 TABLE OF CONTENTS:

S.N0 CONTENTS PAGE NO.

1. Introduction 4

2. Objectives of the study 5

3. Research methodology 5

4. Findings 6 - 16

5. Analysis 17 – 18

7. Recommendation 19

8. Appendices 20 – 23

9. References 24
INTRODUCTION

What is Service promotion?

An initiative taken by the marketing staff of any organization to increase sales for their target
market by using digital media, print media, trade shows, billboards, posters or any of the
channels to enhance their brand as well as attract customers and increase revenues is called
service promotion. Service promotion in today’s generation has become very crucial for any
organization as there are many companies fighting for market share and to become the market
leader you have to be innovative and come out with the best promotional strategies. The
cultural perspective has also to be taken into consideration when you are coming out with
service promotion as it is detrimental for your sales. The various service promotion used by
uber are referral schemes, emotional advertising etc.

Sales promotions are the set of marketing activities undertaken to boost sales of the product
or service. There are two basic types of sales promotions: trade and consumer sales
promotions. The schemes, discounts, freebies, commissions and incentives given to the trade
(retailers, wholesalers, distributors, C&Fs) to stock more, push more and hence sell more of a
product come under trade promotion. Sales promotion activities aimed at the final consumer
are called consumer schemes. These are used to create a pull for the product and are
advertised in public media to attract attention. Maximum schemes are floated in festival
times, like Diwali or Christmas.

Product and Services promotions are very similar in nature. In product promotion the benefits
of using a product are described and emphasis is laid on how it will improve the consumer’s
life. In service promotion the value and benefits of opting in to a service are described. On
the whole, there isn't much of a difference except that one is tangible and the other intangible.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
This study was conducted to find out about the following issues:

 Competition and challenges faced by Uber currently and in the future in India and
globally.
 Promotional schemes and campaigns used by Uber in India.
 Service failures occurred in India or abroad and how did they manage to retain the
customers by providing Service Recovery.
 Strategies being followed by Uber in order to differentiate from its competitors
worldwide.
 How did Uber manage to maintain its brand value and recall through strategic tie-ups.
 How the service quality is being managed globally.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Exploratory Research:

An Exploratory Research is defined as the initial research, where a researcher has an idea or
has observed something and seeks to understand more about it.

This project on service promotion has been done to explore the objectives and to lay the
groundwork that will lead to future improvements based on our studies.

Data Collection:

The data has been collected using primary sources by means of a research questionnaire
which was answered by 133 respondents and secondary sources, i.e., data that has been
already collected and readily available from other sources, like online portals1 .
FINDINGS

About Uber

Travis Kalanick & Garrett Camp established Uber as “Uber Cab” Received venture funding
from First Round Capital and super angel investors in Silicon Valley Raised $32 million from
various investors, like Goldman Sachs, Menlo Ventures, and Bezos Expeditions Uber Apps
for iPhones and Android phone introduced Raised more than $11.5 million from Benchmark
Capital.

How it works?

Uber uses a smartphone application to accept ride requests, & then redirects these trip
applications to their chauffeurs. In some towns, if Uber cab is travelling at more than 11 mph
(18 km/h), then the payment is decided upon distance, else the price is decided upon time
basis. On reaching the destination, the entire fare is automatically billed to the customer's
credit card/Paytm/cash. Uber has categorized its high prices as premium being paid by the
travelers as its service is reliable, punctual as well as comfortable. During festival season
such as Halloween, New Year's Eve, or severe weather conditions, Uber reserves rights to
increase its prices, alluring more business.

Uber App:

Uber app is free from apple app store, Google play store, & blackberry world. Once
downloaded, register & login. Choose out of five vehicle types as options. Spot your pick up
location, enter your destination and select mode of payment.

Who drives for Uber?

Uber requires that its drivers pass a DMV and background check. They also must have their
own car and it must be insured. There is a personal inspection of the vehicle to check for
exterior damage, cleanliness, wear and tear. Uber drivers are free to operate with other travel
and tour operators and pick up Uber customers only when free, that’s why we don’t see any
cab bearing an uber logo. Because of these minimal requirements, the service attracts a large
array of people.
Uber utilizes a rating system as a way of encouraging good behavior on behalf of passengers
and drivers. Both parties can rate one another on a five-star scale at the end of a ride.

Other taxi cab services in India:

Ola Cabs

OlaCabs, commonly known as Ola, is an Indian online transportation network company. Ola
started as an online cab aggregator in Mumbai, now based out in Bangalore.

The company has expanded to a network of more than 200,000 cars across 85 cities. Ola
Auto expanded to cities like Delhi, Pune and Chennai starting December 2014. In December
2015, Ola expanded its auto services in Chandigarh, Indore & Jaipur. Ola was valued at $5
billion as of September 2015.

Ola provides different types of cab service ranging from economic to luxury travel. The cabs
are reserved through a mobile app. This cab service supports both cash and cashless payment
options with Ola money.

The company also engaged in multiple partnerships to strengthen its business, like

 Strategic partnership with China’s DidiKuaidi, US-based Lyft and Malaysia’s

GrabTaxi, which will allow passengers to book rides on any of these four services
using just one app.
 Partnership with customer-based chat services company, Haptik, which will allow
users to book Ola cabs through instant messaging on the Haptik mobile app.
 Partnership with MapMyIndia.

Meru Cabs

Meru cabs was founded by Neeraj Gupta in Mumbai on April 2007, by raising funds against
an equity stake in the company from India Value Fund (IVF), which is a private equity fund
with a corpus of over US$1.4 Billion. On 2 February 2014, Google Now and Meru Cabs
announced a partnership to provide instant alerts to customers. Meru cabs partnered with
French taxi service provider Taxis G7 to provide taxi services globally.

Meru Cabs is a taxi aggregator company based in Mumbai, India. It provides cab booking
facilities through calls, website or through their mobile application and payment through
cash, card or wallet christened Cab Wallet. Meru Cabs integrated their cab service with
Google Now which will send passengers remainders for cab pickups, alerting them if they
wish to book a cab based on their location and other information through Now Cards within
the Google app.

Other top taxi cab services globally

Didikuadi

DidiChuxing, formerly DidiKuaidi, is a Chinese transportation network company

headquartered in Beijing. It provides vehicles and taxis for hire in China via smartphone
applications. Formed from the merger of rival firms DidiDache and KuaidiDache (backed by
the two largest Chinese Internet companies, Tencent and Alibaba respectively).

DidiChuxing is an application where taxis, premium cars and designated drivers can be hired
via smartphone. It is similar to apps such as GrabTaxi in Southeast Asia. Alongside its basic
taxi-calling function such as the ability to carpool, hire premium cars, hire designated drivers
and use a special service for passengers with disabilities and its closest local competitor is
uber.

Lyft

Lyft is a privately held American transportation network company (TNC) based in San
Francisco, CA. Launched in June 2012 by Logan Green and John Zimmer, the company's
mobile-phone application facilitates peer-to-peer ridesharing by connecting passengers who
need a ride with drivers who have a car and here also the main competitor is Uber.

Lyft offers three types of rides within the app:

 For a discounted price, Lyft Line will match passengers with other riders if they are
going in the same direction.
 Lyft is the original offering that matches passengers with nearby drivers.
 Lyft Plus will match passengers with a six-seater car.
Grab taxi

Grab (formerly known as GrabTaxi) is a mobile e-hailing application available in six

countries. It is an automated smartphone based booking and dispatch platform for the taxi
industry in Southeast Asia, available in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia
and the Philippines. Their vision is to revamp the Southeast Asian taxi industry, making it a
safer and more efficient means of transport for the Southeast Asian communities.

GrabCar, GrabCar+ and GrabBike services are available on the same platform as GrabTaxi,
which in turn, offers the GrabTaxi users a transportation option when they are travelling in
any of the 6 countries where GrabTaxi operate in.

SERVICE PROMOTIONS OF UBER

Instead of spending crores of marketing money on pushing traditional campaigns, Uber

instead decided to spend on giving the consumers a firsthand experience of their service.
They were aware of the notion that nothing would attract the Indian consumer more than a
discount or special offer on a service they needed and thus decided to go heavy on their
referrals scheme. Since then Uber’s referral marketing has evolved massively by coupling it
with various other offers like heavy discounts and free rides.

Some of the different promotional schemes and campaigns used by Uber in

India are:

1. Referral Schemes:

Uber’s first thought was to target the corporate sector by asking customers to become “Office
Heroes” by referring their non-Uber using co-workers and friends. Under this scheme both
the persons would get a free ride of up to Rs. 250 each, and if an existing customer referred
10, 25 or 50 people he would get the same number of rides free as an extra bonus. This was
unlike other schemes under the same name which would only benefit the person referring, so
it was a win-win situation for both parties. This is one of the major contributors to the
widespread success of Uber in India. Also they didn’t fall into the trap of wanting to
collect more user data and gain access to social accounts at the expense of their referral
program making it a simple and quick process for the consumers.
2. Festival Marketing:

Festivals have always been a great opportunity for brands to promote their products and
services and milk the happy, guilt free splurging phase of Indian consumers. Uber used this to
their advantage and decided to become available for their customers when most needed by
having unique promotional campaigns that banked on the popularity of these festivals to
position themselves in the minds of consumers and boost sales. Some examples of these are:

 Delivery of kites on MakarSankranti, colors on Holi and cupcakes on RakshaBandhan

 Special offer for a makeover for mothers on Mother’s Day
 A package deal on Valentine’s day including a ride in an Uber chopper followed by
lunch
 On the 65th Republic Day, Uber offered its users in Delhi a 65% discount on cab
rides
 Free rides for new users in Kolkata on the day of Durga Puja

3. Local connect with consumers:

Uber is trying to catch the pulse and characteristics of every city. Brands need to be more
human for the consumers to connect and Uber is doing just that by catering to consumers,
city wise. India is known for its vast diversity and Uber understood that just a single
marketing or promotional strategy will not work out, so it came up with different promotional
schemes to cater to people from different cities. Some examples of this are:

 Discounts for everyone travelling to the Mumbai Business Week

 Luxury cars for free for everyone attending the Vibrant Gujarat Summit in
Ahmedabad
 Free pick up and drop service to the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore
 Celebrated Chandigarh’s 48th Birthday by giving a 48% discount on rides.
 Discounted rides to IPL matches and other key events
4. Strategic Partnerships:

After gaining popularity among the masses with its promotional discounted and free rides,
Uber needed to do something else to stay in the game and establish itself as an innovative
player, and so they started getting into partnerships with other popular products and services
to boost its brand image. Some of the more important ones are listed below:

 Uber tied up with Zomato globally and integrated with their app to offer a seamless
experience for foodies and riders alike.
 It associated with Book My Show as their official logistics partner for the T20
Cricket season. Customers booking tickets for matches with the Book My Show app
would receive two promotional free rides.
 It tied up with MINI as part of a promotional campaign that saw it offer free 15
minute rides in the new MINI in select cities for a limited period.
 It integrated its payment system with PayTM and gave away five free rides to users
who linked their account with the new wallet system.
 It teamed up with ITPL (International Premier Tennis League) and offered riders to
meet up with tennis stars like Rafael Nadal, SaniaMirza and others.
 It partnered with food delivery app Swiggyand provided surprise food packages in
some cabs as part of promotion.

Uber’s most brilliant Ad campaign globally:

 Uber + Spotify - The company teamed with Spotify to enable customers to listen to
their Spotify playlists while riding.
 Santa’s little helper - Every Christmas, Uber eases Santa’s workload by turning into
UberSleigh. Uber cars have visited more than a dozen cities around the world to
collect toys for the needy.
 The writings in the sky – On Valentine’s Day, Uber launched UberSky, an on-
demand skywriting service.
 Reducing the carbon footprint:Environmentally friendly service
 Say “I love you” with uber: Uber made it easy to say “I love you” by arranging for
delivery of roses to their consumer’s loved ones.
 Summer treat - With a simple tap of the app, users could order ice cream to their
doorstep within minutes.
  Transportation for wedding - Uber teamed with Style Me Pretty to offer
transportation for weddings. Users got customized packages based on their wedding
details.
 UberSloep promotion - Users in the Dutch capital could request a canal boat to ride
around in.
 Ride with a celebrity - Uber gave customers the chance to request a very special ride
— from Optimus Prime & Uber offered one lucky customer in Amsterdam the
chance to be picked up in a Bentley by celebrity DJ Afrojack.

Though several cities have challenged the company with regulations and lawsuits, Uber is
still the transportation of choice for millions of people. Perhaps it’s because users who use the
Uber app will have a chauffeured car pull up within minutes, or maybe it’s because the
company uses one of the most creative marketing strategies out there.

In fact, the expression “I’m going to Uber” has become a part of the global vernacular, said
in different languages. The modest car-service startup has exploded into a roughly $40 billion
company, serving 53 countries worldwide.

COMPETITIONS FACED BY UBER:

Global Competition

Uber had its inception from San Francisco California in 2009. In its home nation competition
comes from Lyft which is also a taxi sharing app. Uber is already losing billions of dollars in
china to compete with Chinese taxi giant Didi Kuaidi backed by Tencent holding and Alibaba
holdings group according to Reuters report. The Chinese company now operates in 400 cities
and has passed breakeven point in many cities. Uber has tough competition for the biggest
market in the world in China from Didi Kuaidi a merger of two biggest taxi firms Didi Dache
and Kuaidi Dache.

In the other Southeast nations Uber has a major threat from Grab formerly Grab Taxi. Grab
has also tied up with Lyft and Didi Kuaidi to expand its business from southeast nation to
other continents as well. In the United Kingdom 8000 Black cab drivers protested against
Uber for unfair competition. The black cabs in UK has a strong union and political factors are
also becoming a burden for Uber in UK.

The Indian Scenario

In India Uber is facing major threat from Ola and Meru cabs, Ola has already acquired Taxi
for sure for $200 million dollars. In India the organized market is dominated by homegrown
Ola cabs having 60% market share and Uber having 5% market share. Ola has strong backers
from Tiger capital, Sequoia capital and Accel partners all huge players in the financial
landscape. The Indian Taxi market is estimated to be around 8 billion dollars hence there is a
huge opportunity for growth in this market. Hence Uber has still a long way to go both in
China as well as India in capturing the Taxi market. To compete with Uber, Ola cabs has tied
up with Grab from Southeast Asia, Lyft from USA and Didi Kuaidi from China hence a
customer can book a taxi from any of these apps for a Taxi in any of these countries.

How does it differ from its competition?

Uber raises a lot of funding from big financial players like Microsoft corp, Google ventures,
Jezz Bezos and Ratan Tata. This type of funding helps Uber to follow a loss leader strategy
and weed out the competitors from the industry. Uber is also planning to invest $1billion in
India to capture the huge market that India has. Uber uses a dynamic pricing strategy it
changes the prices on weekends on festivals and on days where the weather is bad. Price wars
is another strategy that Uber uses to compete with global competitors who are joining hands
to beat Uber. The Taxi sharing company has huge potential for growth and there is tough
competition for market share however very few companies are able to survive in this
cutthroat competition, and Uber is one of them and will remain so in years to come.
SERVICE FAILURE AND SERVICE RECOVERY OF UBER

Service Failure

 Service Failure that have happened and can happen in Uber:

 Uber charging cancellation fee just after five minutes of booking the cab. That becomes a
problem in India, as the Indian cab drivers are usually 10 minutes late and during that time if
the customer in his urgency cancels Uber cab then also he has to pay the cancellation charges.
 Unknown technical faults due to which customers have to pay twice or sometimes even four or
five times more than the actual fare.
 Uber being unable to establish its USP in India of picking and dropping off the customer from
his specified location.
 Unnecessary delay in the timing because of police stopping the drivers for a random check
(because of the Delhi rape case). Due to this the customers have missed their flights and trains
in multiple incidents.

For example: A Minnesota woman was charged for multiple Uber rides, when she hadn’t
even used the Uber app in years. Her Uber account was showing that she had been travelling
around on the same route multiple times, which costed her $1342. The Uber officials did
refund her the money and said that, “While it looks like that your account was impacted, but
our team has investigated and found no evidence of a system-wide breach at Uber.”

The customer is still unsatisfied with Uber’s service recovery as neither did they contacted
her through phone and informed her about whether they are looking into the matter nor did
they give her a guarantee or a reassurance that the same thing won’t happen again.

Service Recovery

One of the major events of service failure that has occurred in the history of Uber was in
Delhi, India. In the case, a young lady aged 27, was allegedly raped by an Uber Cab driver in
Gurgaon region of North Delhi. The case hit the headlines and became a nationwide outcry,
due to which Uber had to stop its services in Delhi as per the orders of the Supreme Court.

In a statement released by the company, when the incident came to light, Uber spokeswoman
Evelyn Tay said: "Safety is Uber's highest priority and in India, we work with licensed
driver-partners to provide a safe transportation option, with layers of safeguards such as
driver and vehicle information, and ETA-sharing to ensure there is accountability and
traceability of all trips that occur on the Uber platform,"

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in a statement said, "Our entire team's hearts go out to the victim
of this despicable crime. We will do everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this
perpetrator to justice and to support the victim and her family in her recovery." He also
added, "We will work with the government to establish clear background checks currently
absent in their commercial transportation licensing programs. We will also partner closely
with the groups who are leading the way on women’s safety here in New Delhi and around
the country and invest in technology advances to help make New Delhi a safer city for
women."

As promised, Uber did coordinate with the Government and made sure that this type of
incident doesn’t get repeated. In order to do so they increased their precautionary measures
before choosing their driving partners. What happened with the victim couldn’t be reversed
but they did reach at a settlement with the family of the victim at an undisclosed amount.

Why this incident can be considered to be a service recovery is because, despite the protests
against the company and even requesting the government to shut down the company’s
operations throughout the country they still managed to survive and convince their customers
about the safety options and delivering satisfactory service to them.

The questionnaire consisted of total of 5 questions and was responded to by 133 people out of which
males constituted 51.9 % and females 48.1 %.

The findings from the collected data are as below:

 90.1 % respondents said they used cab services

 The most preferred method of booking cabs is through mobile apps (80.5%)
 Out of 6 factors, the most appealing benefit for respondents was the ability to ‘Track the cab
driver’ (55.6%), followed by ‘Safety’ (45.9 %).
 The most preferred cab service was Ola with 48.1 % respondents rating it highest, followed
closely by Uber with 46.6 %, giving it close competition.
ANALYSIS
Uber does make the experience as different as possible and it is the progressive part about
Uber that makes its customers chooses it over cabs. Even though the customers could
accomplish the same feat by hailing a cab, the Uber experience is different for a number of
reasons. Firstly the hailing process is much simpler. No waving at cabs driving by. No
haggling over prices. Just opening an app and clicking a button. Secondly, while the quality
of vehicles that Uber drivers can use has decreased from a maximum of 10 years old to a
maximum of 15 years old, these vehicles are still by in large nicer than the taxi cab
alternative. The clientele that drives for Uber is higher class than taxi cabs and this makes
riders feel more comfortable. Lastly, the price is a differentiating factor. Uber saves big time
when it comes to overhead and they pass this on to their customers as savings which helps to
differentiate their service from taxis.

The employees also enjoy flexible hours of operation, which is one of the main factors that
attract more employees. Their policy of allowing employees to operate with other cab
companies also helps their employees earn more.

Uber primarily makes use of referral schemes as its main promotional strategy in India. This
is further supplemented by means of various discounts and schemes it offers on a regular
basis during festivals and events. Globally, Uber makes use of the one size fits all approach
where one promotional campaign is run across different cities during the time of festivals and
events. Whereas in India, it has tried to establish a local connect with the consumers by
coming up with unique promotional campaigns for different cities in order to cater to the vast
diversity that exists within the country. Also Uber in India has used strategic partnerships to a
great level in order to gain popularity among the youth segment.

Uber has also consistently been trying to make its expansion globally. In every nation it has
faced local competition and has been successful by weeding out most of the competition.
Uber uses a loss leader strategy in whichever nation it goes, it also learns about the culture
and makes its promotions based on emotional advertising. In India Ola has been able to
match with uber and there is intense competition between them. Uber does have an advantage
of being a foreign entity with huge backing by big financial players but Ola is also not
lagging behind and getting its own sources of funding. Uber faces competition from Didi
Kuaidi, Lyft, Grab Taxi and various other organizations who are joining hands to reduce the
growth of Uber. Hence Uber has to continuously come out with strategies to outmaneuver
competition if it wants to stay on top of the Taxi industry.

Uber Cab’s, although very successful in other countries, couldn’t achieve the same success in
India because they didn’t pay much attention to screening their cab drivers’ details and
verifying them.Moreover, they weren’t able to maintain and upgrade their apps so as to
enable the company to know about the location of the cabs and avoid any mishaps.
RECOMMENDATIONS

 Due to upcoming cab services like Uber, Ola, etc., which have gained great popularity
among passengers, & also government provided transport services like buses, metros,
etc., auto-rickshaw drivers are slowly becoming obsolete & running out of business,
therefore Uber can revive their “Uber Auto” & provide employment to these auto drivers.
 Uber should allow its customers to pre-book cars so as to avoid inconvenience during
peak hours.
 Uber can promote their 2-wheeler services especially among college students due to its
low charges & convenience.
 Uber can also start using female drivers during the day, so as to support feminism; and
use “#uberher” to promote this initiative.
 Uber can also come up with a luxury car section for the richer & higher class of society.
APPENDICES

1. Uber growth in India

2. Different cab models to cater to everyone

3. Research Questionnaire for collecting Primary Data:

1. What is your gender?

 Male
 Female

2. Do you use taxicab services?

 Yes
 No

3. How do you generally book your taxicab?

 App
 Phone call
 Online
 Others

4. Whether you have used a taxi app before or not, which of the following benefits appeal to
you? (Select all that apply)
 Don’t have to call
 Don’t have to signal to a taxi in the street
 Payment via the app
 Tracking the driver
 Taxi driver ratings on the app
 Safety

5. Which taxicab service do you prefer the most?

 Uber
 Ola
 Meru
 Sky cabs
 Others (Please specify)

4. Data collected from Questionnaire:

REFERENCES

 http://bradlongmba.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/ubers-product-differentiation.html
 http://tofurious.com/marketing-strategy/uber-competitive-strategy-vs-taxi/
 http://www.business-standard.com/article/management/uber-gets-into-its-india-gear-
115072600731_1.html
 http://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/cover-story/india-taxi-market-war-heats-up-
ola-cabs-uber-strategy-leaders/story/222542.html
 http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/30/as-uber-drives-into-india-its-shifting-its-emerging-
market-strategy-up-a-gear/
 https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/uber
 http://hooklineandclincher.in/uber-marketing-strategy-india/
 https://salt.agency/blog/ubers-marketing/
 https://urbanful.org/2015/01/21/17-of-ubers-most-brilliant-ad-campaigns/
 http://hooklineandclincher.in/uber-marketing-strategy-india/
 https://newsroom.uber.com/
 http://qz.com/630153/uber-starts-motorbike-taxi-service-in-india-ola-follows-
immediately/
 http://www.livemint.com/Companies/juHY7ITCICW6jrrYODZ7oJ/Uber-launches-
cheaper-brand-UberX-to-compete-with-Meru-Ola.html
 http://www.exchange4media.com/advertising/inside-the-ola-vs-uber-marketing-war-
zone_62697.html