Surge pricing?... Doesn't stop Uber from spending $3.1B on "the Uber of the Middle East": Careem. The deal had leaked before — Tuesday's surprise was that Uber closed it just weeks before it plans to go public. Most companies would be focused on their IPO right now. Uber's not most companies.
Let someone else drive... That's been Uber's go-to move abroad. It's buying 100% of its regional rival Careem, but typically it invests in just a percentage of its competitors so they can keep running their own company. This way if a competitor wins, it wins. And a bunch of Uber copycats copy that same strategy:
- Uber owns 37% of Russia's Yandex, and 28% of Southeast Asia's Grab. And it used to own 20% of China's Didi but then sold it back to Didi.
- Didi invested $600M in Brazil's ride-hailer, 99 Taxis.
- Gett, which is Israeli, owns part of New York's Juno.
- It's incestuous competition in ride-hailing, defined by the Uber of (blank) cozying up with the Uber of (blank).
International is Uber's differentiator... With Lyft about to IPO Friday and Uber aiming for April, both are about to become available to public investors. Uber's not just bigger, it's also more internationally sophisticated. It's studied abroad plenty, so an investment in Uber could be exposure to Earth-wide ride-sharing.
FYI, Careem is The Middle East's biggest tech startup sale ever — Here's what Uber's Iranian-born CEO emailed Uberites about it.