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linkregister

So few have or can?

Lyft, which is still experiencing 100% growth year-over-year?

Didi, which dominates the Chinese market?

Ola, which matches Uber in India?

Grab, which dominates in Malaysia and is experiencing large growth in Southeast Asia?

Didi, Lyft, and Uber are all nearing the point where they can't dump subsidies on the market; they have to raise rates or they won't raise more money. They have to become profitable soon. When they become public companies, they won't be able to lower rates at the expense of profits without raising the ire of shareholders.

By the way, the entire European market is open to the ride sharing company who can be palatable to EU governments. Uber is failing at this; the opportunity is very much there.

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Lyft is going bankrupt in my opinion. They'll be acquired by one of the far larger companies interested in the space. They have a maximum of 12 to 18 months before an acquisition is forced upon them, as it nearly was a year ago, when they failed to find a buyer at the valuation they were seeking. There's no scenario where Lyft remains a viable stand-alone competitor; they're already not a viable competitor, their last funding merely bought them one more year of flailing about, burning vast red ink, looking for a buyer.

It's obviously a different context globally, due to regulations, nationalism, et al. Didi for example will never own the US market, they're likely to end up like other Chinese tech giants, struggling to dominate internationally as they do domestically.

Ola is the next Flipkart.

But how is that any different than Uber? IMO people are going to be in for a real wake-up call when these companies finally kill traditional taxi company and there is a massive rate hike. Right now everyone loves Uber because they are cheaper than the equivalent Taxi ride but that is only because they are operating a massive loss and do some shady things with the way they hire and pay drivers.

> But how is that any different than Uber?

Because they have a lot more money and will remain standing as an independent entity. Prices will either rise, or Uber will remove costs via autonomous driving (they're hoping to get there before they have to hike prices, because if they get there in time, it becomes a very difficult to overcome moat and they win).

Amazon nearly went bankrupt on their hyper thin margins early on. Had the dotcom bubble popped just a bit sooner, they'd have gone under. They were bleeding red ink trying to get to scale before the easy money ran out. Uber is trying to do a similar thing, fortunately for them the asset bubble party has continued on long enough for them to raise a vast warchest of cash.

Prices likely won't go up when taxis are gone. Uber doesn't consider taxis to be a competitor. Uber is trying to compete with car ownership. Liquidity begets liquidity. This is why marketplaces like stock exchanges and Amazon are natural monopolies.

The best thing is, if any of these ride sharing services raise prices too high, taxis will return. In comparison, they are cheap to start and operate.

So if prices don't go up, and prices are only held artificially low by burning VC money, what happens to the company? I'm not seeing an end-game that isn't "VCs pull out" or "prices go up".

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