Uber use data to deliver against their core purpose: Travel & Logistics.
What’s Uber’s next move? Planes? Rockets? Hovercrafts? Nope, it’s bikes.
Uber has just paid $200m for Jump, a dockless bike share service that charges just $2 for a 30 min ride. The bikes are integrated with GPS, locks & a payment system so you just find one and pedal. Boris Bikes I hear you say ?
The bike-sharing market is only going one way: Up. It’s growing at 20% a year and set to be worth up to £4.6bn in 2020. Jump’s stats mirror this, with customers using their bikes 6-7 times a day and travelling 2.6 miles each trip.
With this, Uber’s bike stock rockets up to 12,000 across 40 cities and 6 countries. Their cash can help grow Jump worldwide, and quickly, but their poor reputation may also bring scrutiny to an industry which has had a few problems in the past…
Less than a decade after launching, Uber is no longer just cars. Recently they’ve launched a shipping service, food delivery, and now bikes. They’re also trialing car rental and the ability to buy public transport tickets. This appears to mark a new strategy: to own every part of the urban transport system.
Why now? 3 reasons:
- Uber has changed how people think about sharing
- Smartphone GPS services have made it easier than ever to get around
- Uber has the cash, brand & user base to make it happen
Uber envision a world where mum bikes to work, dad rents a van to pick up a new TV, the teenager gets her food delivered, and the family books their train tickets to see their cousins. We could even see an Amazon Prime-like model whereby you pay a blanket fee for unlimited usage.
But what if you don’t like cycling:
Don’t you worry, here’s a couple ways startups are reinventing travel:
- Citymapper: They’re using years of travel data from their app to create a ‘social hyper-local multi-passenger pooled vehicle’ i.e. a bus. It serves an optimised route, has USB chargers & you even get a ‘Busmoji’ when you get on
- Touriocity: Bespoke walking guides given by experts
- Kompas : using AI recomendations based on who you are and where you are to provide travel recommendations
- Bird: Taking it even further, by making dock-less electric Scooters
Data Pulses storytelling 