SANTA MONICA, United States: Uber, the ridesharing behemoth set to launch a stock offering soon, is aiming beyond sharing car rides to becoming the “Amazon of transportation” in a future where people share instead of owning vehicles.
Uber laid out its vision of a transformed world of personal mobility as it steered toward a keenly anticipated stock market debut that will follow an initial public offering of shares by US rideshare rival Lyft announced on Friday.
“Cars really were, for us, a kind of starting place,” said transportation policy and research chief Andrew Salzberg at an Uber media event in Santa Monica, California.
“Once we’ve built this platform for mobility there are a whole host of business lines we can build beyond that.”
The Southern California beach city was teeming with electric scooters and bicycles from Uber and rivals that may be checked out with a smartphone app.
“The idea that every time you walk outside there is this electric, fun-to-ride vehicle waiting to take you to your next destination is really incredible,” said Nick Foley, head of product for Jump, the electric bike startup acquired by Uber.
“It’s more than just an app to book a bike; it’s an app where you can have reliable micro mobility booking or a could book a car if the weather isn’t nice.”
Foley believed that a shift to mobility as a smartphone-summoned-service will alter lifestyles as dramatically as did the mass market debut of the automobile.
Combining electric motors with light-weight scooters or bicycles, and having them on streets to be used on demand, provides an ideal method of getting around in traffic-troubled cities, according to Uber.
Electric bicycles and scooters can get people efficiently to destinations in congested downtowns, where they can switch to public transit or car ride sharing at their convenience.
Uber’s effort to be an all-encompassing platform for getting around includes adding e-scooter rival Lime and city transit services to its smartphone application, along with improving features designed to get people to travel together instead of riding solo.
The California-based startup’s collaboration with cities includes sharing anonymous traffic flow data with officials in charge of public transit, bicycle lanes, parking and road planning.
Uber is also integrating transit schedules into its app, and will soon add a way to pay fares as well.
“We can’t really be the Amazon for transportation without the biggest mode of transportation out there, which is public transport,” said Uber transit team leader David Reich.
“The vision is to be an all-in-one app for all your transportation needs.”
If all goes to plan, commuters could ride an e-scooter to a transit station, take a train then grab an e-bike, ride share or e-scooter at the arriving station to complete a journey.
Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi has made a priority of working with transit agencies, according to Reich.
Jump has leapt into 16 US cities, and planned to expand internationally this year beginning in Europe, according to founder and chief executive Ryan Rzepecki.
“I think we are in year zero of a 10-year, mega-cultural shift,” Rzepecki said.
E-scooters and dockless bikes arriving on streets of US cities have caused complaints, safety concerns, and the need for laws to reign in reckless riding.
“For as much cultural change we have been seeing in cities, I think the pushback has been incredibly low,” Rzepecki said, however.
He was excited to get Jump into Europe, where he felt cities were more inclined to be designed with bicycling in mind.
Uber is also taking to the sky with an Elevate project to have electric aircraft carry people between “skyports,” taking off and landing vertically.
Director of vehicle systems engineering Mark Moore, who spent decades at NASA, joined Uber a little more than two years ago.
“We are one of the very big, bold bets that is coming up with a whole new choice of transportation in cities faced with gridlock really grinding them to a halt,” Moore said of Elevate.
He expected experimental flights next year, with Uber putting Elevate aircraft into service in Dallas, Los Angeles, and a soon-to-be revealed third US city by 2023, pledging to make this an affordable travel option.
“We have zero interest in doing this for the elites,” Moore said.
“This is all about designing a nodal transport system that meets the needs of cities.”
Uber’s platform moves cargo as well as people, with a “Freight” service that connects truckers with shippers in a way similar to how drivers connect with people seeking rides.
Uber is also seeing growing success with an “Eats” service that lets drivers make money delivering meals ordered from restaurants.
Uber is the largest and most prominent of the “sharing economy” startups that are on the cusp of transforming several industries, and its IPO could be a milestone for the trend.
“When Uber goes public it will be a vote of confidence on the sharing economy but also a vote confidence on the company,” said New York University professor Arun Sundararajan.
With IPO due, Uber aims to be ‘Amazon of transportation’
With IPO due, Uber aims to be ‘Amazon of transportation’
- Uber lays out vision of a transformed world of personal mobility as it steers toward a keenly anticipated stock market debut
- ‘The vision is to be an all-in-one app for all your transportation needs’
Arab food and beverage sector draws $22bn in foreign investment over 2 decades: Dhaman
JEDDAH: Foreign investors committed about $22 billion to the Arab region’s food and beverage sector over the past two decades, backing 516 projects that generated roughly 93,000 jobs, according to a new sectoral report.
In its third food and beverage industry study for 2025, the Arab Investment and Export Credit Guarantee Corp., known as Dhaman, said the bulk of investment flowed to a handful of markets. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Morocco and Qatar attracted 421 projects — about 82 percent of the total — with capital expenditure exceeding $17 billion, or nearly four-fifths of overall investment.
Projects in those five countries accounted for around 71,000 jobs, representing 76 percent of total employment created by foreign direct investment in the sector over the 2003–2024 period, the report said, according to figures carried by the Kuwait News Agency.
“The US has been the region's top food and beverage investor over the past 22 years with 74 projects or 14 projects of the total, and Capex of approximately $4 billion or 18 percent of the total, creating more than 14,000 jobs,” KUNA reported.
Investment was also concentrated among a small group of multinational players. The sector’s top 10 foreign investors accounted for roughly 15 percent of projects, 32 percent of capital expenditure and 29 percent of newly created jobs.
Swiss food group Nestlé led in project count with 14 initiatives, while Ukrainian agribusiness firm NIBULON topped capital spending and job creation, investing $2 billion and generating around 6,000 jobs.
At the inter-Arab investment level, the report noted that 12 Arab countries invested in 108 projects, accounting for about 21 percent of total FDI projects in the sector over the past 22 years. These initiatives, carried out by 65 companies, involved $6.5 billion in capital expenditure, representing 30 percent of total FDI, and generated nearly 28,000 jobs.
The UAE led inter-Arab investments, accounting for 45 percent of total projects and 58 percent of total capital expenditure, the report added, according to KUNA.
The report also noted that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar topped the Arab ranking as the most attractive countries for investment in the sector in 2024, followed by Oman, Bahrain, Algeria, Morocco, and Kuwait.
Looking ahead, Dhaman expects consumer demand to continue rising. Food and non-alcoholic beverage sales across 16 Arab countries are projected to increase 8.6 percent to more than $430 billion by the end of 2025, equivalent to 4.2 percent of global sales, before exceeding $560 billion by 2029.
Sales are expected to remain highly concentrated geographically, with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, the UAE and Iraq accounting for about 77 percent of the regional total. By product category, meat and poultry are forecast to lead with sales of about $106 billion, followed by cereals, pasta and baked goods at roughly $63 billion.
Average annual per capita spending on food and non-alcoholic beverages in the region is projected to rise 7.2 percent to more than $1,845 by the end of 2025, approaching the global average, and to reach about $2,255 by 2029. Household spending on these products is expected to represent 25.8 percent of total expenditure in 13 Arab countries, above the global average of 24.2 percent.
Arab external trade in food and beverages grew more than 15 percent in 2024 to $195 billion, with exports rising 18 percent to $56 billion and imports increasing 14 percent to $139 billion. Brazil was the largest foreign supplier to the region, exporting $16.5 billion worth of products, while Saudi Arabia ranked as the top Arab exporter at $6.6 billion.
