Uber sells food delivery business in India to Zomato | Hacker News Reader

Uber sells food delivery business in India to Zomato

techcrunch.com

59 pointskkcorps37 comments

Ubereats user from India here. Just opened the Ubereats app and it says "your account is now set up on Zomato" and directing to Zomato app. Looks like they completely shut down the app and moved their operations to the Zomato app.

Why is that surprising?

I assumed this was simply relating what is happening from a users perspective.

Also, here's how Uber Eats' India page on the web looks like: https://i.imgur.com/rkDQ7qN.jpg

I think Uber is getting a good deal out of all these exits

10% in Zomato

27% in Grab

15% in Didi

x% in Yandex

Acquiring a stake in all the over-valued startups seems like a double-edged sword. The valuation markdown at the time of IPOs of these startups will affect Uber too.

But ubereats and other Uber subsidiaries that they sold were themselves over valued, You can see these acquiring a stake as diversification in highly competitive marketplace.

Without a doubt. And most of them won’t have the market to get the lofty valuations paid out (which didn’t even work in the best funded market - the US)

Yandex definitely isn't over-valued. It's undervalued, if anything.

Yea that’s certainly one way of looking at it.

The other is “we burned billions trying to win those markets and lost every one of them to a local competitor”

what if Uber becomes an international holding company for ride sharing businesses?

Is that a better or worse future?

Uber lost some markets and won in others (e.g. LatAM, Australia). Also, it's not like Uber spent the money and got nothing for it - it's stake in DiDi is worth more than the amount of money Uber spent in China.

Many companies are facing winner takes all, so if your failures result in getting a significant stake in your competitions businesses, you’re doing pretty well IMO.

As much as I’d like that not to be the case for Uber.

But Taxis are not a winner-takes-all business. They may be on a city-by-city basis, but not nationally.

I wonder how much stake SoftBank has in each of these.

Uber will end up being an American(-only) business like Lyft. It’s inevitable.

Agreed. As someone who has seen too much of the world, Uber doesn't stand a chance in hell. Grab dominated Asia. Turns out struggling folks aren't willing to pay the Uber premium like Americans do.

Grab dominated SE Asia and that exit for Uber made sense as they got a very good equity stake in a dominant player. They still haven't exited all parts of Asia. I really doubt that Uber is going to be a US only business. They still are growing in markets outside US as well. They had 30% YOY revenue growth last quarter in APAC compared to 38% in NA. I couldn't find the EBITDA numbers broken by geography though.

I think this was already interesting to see with the host of different payment services which seem to be very resilient locally. Nubank in Brazil, Monso in the UK, Africa has a host of local companies, Revolut in Europe and so on.

There is lot more nuance and regional difference than people thought and I think a lot of companies with questionable business models that bet on world domination will have some problems in the future.

Australia is dominated by Uber unfortunately, I’d hazard a guess they’ve done similarly well for other countries where the competition is weak.

The only competition they faced on entry was Taxis, which is to say, no competition.

The only competition they faced when entering Portugal was taxis, too. Now there are two competitors more.

Well, the Uber cab sector is going pretty good in India from what I know. We don't have Grab here, and only a few local competitors which people don't rely on much (apart from Ola Cabs).

While speculations and early reports of possible sale of Uber Eats were coming, as a user one could see hefty discounts of upto 50% capped at over Rs.200 in the last 3-4 months.

Seems like Travis knew just when to get out. Sinking ship?

Uh he sold all his shares below $30. It’s at $35 now.

Yes, Travis sold a little too early!

$37!

We'll see.

I've been holding since $25

Zomato is raising close to half a billion dollars. I am extremely curious to see how their financial expenditures are.

It's just an app. Does the money go to acquiring new customers via ads? Subsidizing food? Customer service? Running servers?

40% off discount codes on every order like swiggy?

> like swiggy?

I use swiggy often and rather than getting 40% off, I pay 7-8% extra on the list price. Even when orders cross $20.

So yeah, 40% off on every order is just grossly incorrect.

Agreed. Swiggy is amazing. Their customer support is far better than Zomato IMO.

I doubt they spend a lot on customer service. The automatic conversation you are bombarded with has taken care of every issue I have ever had...all just results in refund or feedback to some unknown place. Swiggy has more human interaction but yeah, I think it's better to refund, save money on customer service and ban account after a certain threshold of profit you can get out of a person for a high growth unicorn.

Swiggy is a scam! They stole 200 bucks from me (as food wastage charges) because I didn't look at my phone for 15 minutes after I placed an order with a full address that I had already fully paid for.

You are thinking like it is a technology company. I think app is just a small part of what they do.

It's All of the above plus Zomato Gold

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