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Uber Finally Showcases the Internal Design of its Ride Sharing Air Taxi

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Uber is excited for the launch of its another arm, i.e. Uber Air, and have been working to finalise the design for its air taxies. Finally, after going back and forth with various designs, Uber has teased a reference design for its air taxi, which is more like the design of a spacious helicopter.

Uber Air
Image Source: theverge

The company revealed the reference design at its third annual Elevate conference, an event based on flying taxies, going on in Washington DC, started on June 11th. The showcased design represents how the company envisions its aerial taxis’ internal design to look like.

The company has taken the initiative of offering air taxies to help in reducing the congestion and traffic on the roads and plans to kick off the service starting from 2023. Since there is a lot of time left for the launch of Uber Air, the company took the pains to build a simulated design of the air taxi, to showcase the details of its internal design.

For the design, the company has partnered with aircraft interior designer Safran Cabin. The air taxi has got four seats, arranged in pairs in two rows. Behind the backseat, the passengers will get the space to place their luggage. Since the taxi is for short rides, the company has not paid much of efforts in embedding luxuries to it. The aerial taxi has to comply with the eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) standards, so the design has been kept sleek and simple.

“Together with Safran Cabin, we’ve designed for the first time in history, a bespoke aircraft cabin that is truly mission-driven for aerial ridesharing on Uber Air. Starting with the customer experience, it’s highly considered from the inside-out, yet extensible across different fuselage profiles, and carefully engineered with a path to certification.” Uber Elevate’s Head of Design, John Badalamenti, said in a statement.

Uber is making quite the efforts to become one supreme transportation company, and for its aerial taxies, it has even got companies, like Boeing, on board. Along with Boeing Uber has also partnered with Bell Helicopters and Jaunt.

At the event, the company also revealed the designs of the Skyports it will be building for the passengers to get a Uber Air. Uber even reported that it will be building its first non-US Skyport in Melbourne Australia, the city becoming the third official pilot city for Uber Air, after Dallas and Los Angeles.

Uber Starts Trialing for App-Based e-Bike Service for its London Users

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uber jump electric bike
Image Source: uber.com

The UK is familiar with bicycle hailing services, Lime being the biggest player in the field in the country. After seeing many other bike hailing services run successfully, the UK is now ready to welcome Uber with its new e-bike hiring service. Uber has revealed that it is going to start trialling its electric bike hailing service with 350 of its Jump electric bikes in the London borough of Islington.

Uber also plans to expand into the other part of the London city after successfully completing the trial for a certain period of time. The company will be launching 350 bright red colour Jump bicycles on the streets of London for the trial. The users will be able to find and unlock the bicycle through the Uber app.

The Uber app will show the locations from where the users can get those bikes, charge them with 1 Pound to unlock the bike, guide the users to their destinations through the app’s map, and show them the parking locations after they reach the destination. After the users unlock the bike, they will be charged 12p per minute during the ride, following a five-minute free ride on the e-bike. There are some possibilities that Uber may provide the users with offers and discounts at the beginning, as it has been doing for all its services in the world.

There will be an up 25 pound of penalty for the users who will be parking the bikes away from the provided parking areas, or end the trip at a no parking zone. Though London has already got such bike-hailing services including Mobike and Boris Bikes, it will be interesting to see how Uber emerges midst such a rivalry in the field.

Almost a year ago, the company had almost lost its taxi license to drive on the streets of London, but now the company is all set to revive its services by implanting its Jump e-bikes on the roads of London. The company is already successfully running its Jump e-bike hiring services in the countries, including the US, Canada, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, Paris, etc.

Drivers Planning a Strike Against Uber and Lyft on Wednesday to Get Better Wages and Job Security

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Uber is prepping up to go Public on Friday, i.e. on 10th May, but there is something else that the Uber drivers are planning for. There has been a lot of fuss about the forthcoming IPO for both cab-riding services, Uber and Lyft, and finally, when both are about to go public, the New York Taxi Workers Association is calling on U.S.-based drivers to come in front and participate in a two hours strike on Wednesday.

Almost three days ago, a group of drivers from the UK had also announced that they will be having a 9 hours long boycott of the app on Wednesday over the wages. And now, the NYTWA is also encouraging the Uber drivers to join in the protest for two hours, on Wednesday between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.

The protest is against the two ride-hailing services, and the agenda is to get a better basic wage as well as job security for the Uber drivers. Currently, the Uber drivers are getting a $17 hourly wage, which they want to increase to a better offer. The main motive of the protestors is to coincide with the Uber’s IPO so that the companies take notice of their issue.

“In the IPO filing, Uber said drivers will only get more dissatisfied because they plan to cut our pay and stop incentives. We don’t want our wages to stay just a minimum. We want Uber to answer to us, not to investors. The gig economy is all about exploiting workers by taking away our rights. It has to stop. Uber is the worst actor in the gig economy.” NYTWA member Sonam Lama said in a press release.

Along with New York, the drivers in other cities also are looking forward to the protest. In San Francisco, the drivers have planned to shut off the app for 12 hours and will be protesting at the Uber’s HQ.

On the entire matter, an Uber spokesperson said, “Drivers are at the heart of our service, we can’t succeed without them and thousands of people come into work at Uber every day focused on how to make their experience better, on and off the road. Whether it’s more consistent earnings, stronger insurance protections or fully funded four-year degrees for drivers or their families, we’ll continue working to improve the experience for and with drivers.”

On the other hand, the drivers are claiming that the two companies are working on its PR and is always showing off on how well these two companies treat their drivers. But it is not at all true.

With upcoming IPO Uber is seeking a valuation of $84 billion and with this, the drivers and the other employees of the company are also looking forward to getting a hike in their basic wages.

Uber, Lyft Rewarding the Drivers with Cash Bonuses to Invest in Shares in Their Respective IPOs

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According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, the cab-renting service Uber and Lyft are planning to allocate some cash bonuses to their drives so that they can invest in the company’s shares through the upcoming IPO of those companies.

uber-lyft
Image Source: howtogeek.com

There has been a lot of discussions about the role of a driver in a transport company and most of the times those drivers are not recognised as the full-time employees of that company. Also, under the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), those companies are not allowed to grant those drives a share of the stocks, directly, in the company.

Although many times several laws have been trying to put those drivers into the full-time employee category, companies like Uber and Lyft regards the drivers as individual contractors. Now the two companies are planning to offer those drivers who have been a part of their team for a longer time with rewards, such that they would be able to buy a share of the stakes in the IPO of those companies, before shares to begin trading on public stock exchanges.

According to the reports, Lyft will be granting the drivers, who have completed 10,000 rides, with $1,000 and the driver who have completed over 20,000 rides will get $10,000. It will be the choice of the drivers if they want to keep the money or put the money towards IPO-priced shares.

On the other hand, there is no hint from Uber over the amount of reward money. Although there has been no confirmation from Lyft as well, and the money value can be changed depending upon the situation.

Uber had been talking about offering a part of the shares of the company to its drivers since 2016, and last year, in May, the Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also announced that the company was planning to provide extra benefits and rewards to its drivers. Uber has also started free tuition fee and insurance programs for the drivers working for the company.

Noticeably, both Lyft and Uber are ready to debut on the Nasdaq for their IPOs. It is expected that Lyft between $20 billion and $25 billion in its IPO, and Uber may reach $120 billion in the IPO. Lyft and Uber will be putting hundreds of millions of dollars toward the reward program for its drivers so that they would be able to invest during their IPOs.

Garrett Camp : The Co-founder of the Online Discovery Platform StumbleUpon

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If you are skilled enough you are destined to achieve the goals you set even before you are a graduate. Garrett Camp, a Canadian entrepreneur, was still a student when he started his own business along with three of his college mates. The company gained popularity and within a year, bringing him into the spotlight and making him one of the Top Innovators under the age of 35.

Early Life

Garrett was born on October 4, 1978, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, to an economist father and an artist mother. Later, his parents started a business of architecture. Garrett completed his high schooling from a local government school. Later, he joined the University of Calgary and received a degree in electrical engineering, in 1996. During his junior year, at the college, he went through an internship, in speech recognition technology from Nortel Networks, Montreal. After graduating from the University of Calgary, he enrolled in the Masters in Software Engineering, in the same University and researched on the collaborative systems, evolutionary algorithms and information retrieval.

Garrett Camp
Image Source: designerfund.com

Founding StumbleUpon

Garrett was still in College when he came up with the idea of StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon was the first discovery engine, that was used to find web content for the users. Garrett founded StumbleUpon, with his friends at the University and established its office in San Francisco. The company received its first funding from the Silicon Valley’s Angels Investors. In 2007, eBay acquired StumbleUpon for $75 million. The company expanded its service to 25 million registered users in the next year. Camp re-acquired the company in 2015, as it went under debt, and helped the company recover its original status, once again. The company is still running its website successfully.

Other Ventures

In 2009, with Travis Kalanick, Garrett co-founded Uber, a transportation network company as UberCab. He made the initial funding for the project of $250K, himself. The idea behind Uber was to make the black taxis affordable for the people. Till mid-2012, Uber launched UberX and Uber SUV, making its way in the list of Forbes Top 10 Companies of 2012. Uber has become popular among the people as an affordable medium for travelling and is running its business in 500 cities across the globe.

In 2013, Garett started another venture named Expa that helps other startups financially, by raising funds from the major investors of Silicon Valley.

In 2007, Garrett was listed among the Top Innovators under the age of 35, at Technology Review’s Emerging Technologies Conference, at MIT and Bloomberg Businessweek named him one of Tech’s Best Young Entrepreneurs in 2008. He spoke at the Wireless Influencers and South by Southwest, many a time and attended the DEMO Mobile 2013, as the judge and the panel member. In 2015, his total wealth was estimated to be US$5.3 billion by Forbes.

UberEATS enters India with a promise to deliver food within 35 minutes

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Uber, the taxi hailing app that also runs food delivery service named UberEATS in countries like Australia, UK, US etc. has launched UberEATS in India. Starting its business in the year 2014 in Los Angeles, UberEATS dominates food delivery space in 26 countries across the world and has a presence in total 78 cities, now including Mumbai as well. Uber has finally launched its food delivery app UberEATS in India starting with Mumbai city. They also announced their plans to expand further to six other major cities in India before the year ends.

Bhavik Rathore, appointed as the Head of UberEATS operations in India, said “Mumbai is home to a booming food industry with a vibrant food culture offering both global and local cuisines. The introduction of UberEats in India, with Mumbai as the first city, is a major step in our global expansion and showcases our commitment to the region”. With an experience of delivering food in 78 countries, the team claims to provide cultural food-variety delivered to doorsteps in just 35 minutes!

That’s all good, but one thing that UberEATS has to keep in mind is- they are not getting a clean slate to start with. Apps like Swiggy, Zomato, Just eat, Foodpanda and many more already have a rich customer base in Mumbai. The new entrant has to fight for its piece of cake. To this Kartik said “While Swiggy and Zomato currently have a strong presence in the market, they have, in effect, cleared the way for Uber by helping build a market that didn’t exist earlier.”

UberEATS brings along some unique features to the game as well. The app is going to provide food suggestions according to your location in the city, which means, interface will be different for every person. Suggestions will depend on availability of associated restaurants around your current location when you open your app. As of now, the brand has already signed deals with more than 200 restaurants including The Bohri Kitchen, Le15, Freahmenu and Chaayos. UberEATS is also interlinked with Uber ride app to provide seamless food delivery if you chose to order something during the ride.

India is evolving, and so does the opportunity to earn more in Indian market. Scaling to India is in every global firm’s checklist (except few like Snapchat). With a population of 20 million and being the third business hub in India, Mumbai becomes the target place to get started. And we hope, UberEATS does well in India utilizing the data from Uber ride and their three years of experience worldwide.