The story starts with the CEO and co-founder of Uber,Travis Kalanick dropping out of UCLA

in 1998.
After dropping out, he joined Scour(A local search engine company) and a peer to peer
distribution facilitator.Here he got in touch with major investors like Michael Ovits(former
president of Disney and co-founder of Creative Artists Agency CAA) and Ron Burkle of The
Yucaipa Companies, LLC, a private equity and venture capital firm that specializes in
underperforming U.S. companies in the distribution, logistics, food, retail, consumer
and light industrial sectors.
Scour was sued for over $250 billion and it filled for bankruptcy.
Around 2001, Travis creates Red-Swoosh, another peer-to-peer file sharing
company. He sells the company after 6 years to Akamai for around 20 million.
Then in March 2009, Uber is founded as Uber Cab.
In 2010, Ryan Graves becomes the 1st CEO of Uber Cabs. In June 2010, Uber was
launched in San Francisco as a black car business. Back then, an Uber black car
costed around 1.5 times the cost of a normal cab. The idea was to merge ease of
use with technology, reducing waiting time for cabs. This led to an increase in
availability of cabs. In October 2010, the company raised 1.25 million in seed
funding, and Travis Kalanick again crossed paths with investors from the past like
Shawn Fanning(Founder of Napster). Later, Graves became the GM and Kalanick
went on to become the CEO in December 2010.
Now the stage was set for series A financing. They raised $11 million in a round led
by Benchmark that was at $60 million value and $11 million invested in the company.
Bill Gurley of Benchmark joined the board of directors.
In May 2011, they launched in New York city, which were to become one of their
biggest markets in the coming years, averaging around 170000 rides a day in 2015-
16.
In December 2011, Uber decides to go international. They begin their services in
Paris and raised $32 million dollars in series B. Here were involved player like Jeff
Besos, Goldman Sachs and Menlo Ventures.
In July 2012, they announced UberX, and now you could even get a Prius, which
was 35% less costly than the Black cars.
By August 2013, they raised 258 million dollars from Google Ventures, and the
valuation was a staggering $3.76 billion. They were now a “Unicorn”.
By 2014, they raised $1.4 billion more and had a $17 billion evaluation. There was a
point when Uber was the most valuable private company that hadn’t gone public!
Then came in services like Uber Pool, Uber Rush, Uber Cargo and Uber Eats.
Uber launchings in other cities across the world.

 2012 — London, United Kingdom

 2013 — Mexico City, Mexico
 2013 — Taipei City, Taiwan
 2013 — Johannesburg, South Africa
 2013 — Bangalore, India
 2014 — Beijing, China
 2014 — Lagos, Nigeria
 2015 — Nairobi, Kenya

Uber is hailed as the archetypal disruptive business, and has certainly played havoc
with the taxi industry in major cities across the world by tearing up the rule book. This
disdain for the rule book has, however seen it dogged by controversies throughout
its existence. Irrespective of that, CNBC still rated Uber 2nd on its list of most
disruptive companies in the world in 2018, beaten only by SpaceX.

Key Uber Statistics

 Uber has a global market value of $72 billion.
 Uber generated $12 billion in gross bookings in the most recent
quarter.
 There are more than 75 million active Uber riders across the
world.
 Uber is available in more than 80 countries worldwide.
 Uber has completed more than 5 billion rides.
 Over 3 million people drive for Uber.
 In the United States, Uber fulfills 40 million rides per month.
 The average Uber driver earns $364 per month.

In India, Ola and Uber are the two giants competing neck to neck.
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