Well, you must have heard about the on-going ups and downs in the premises of Uber. Within, a very short span of time, a lot of things have changed for the Uber. And now Uber is heading towards some new issues. On Tuesday, the company confirmed that Department of Justice is probing whether the officials of Uber broke the US laws, by bribing the officials in different foreign countries.
No confirmation regarding the foreign countries or officials has been stated yet. But this tragic news has affected the other start-up companies in the Silicon Valley. It is also predicted that different large international MNCs like Halliburton and Walmart are also subjected to the Probing. Matt Kallman, spokesman, Uber, mentioned that Uber has no problem with the investigations and all the officials of Uber will cooperate with the investigations.
To restrict the foreign bribery issues, the US Government has maintained a separate law named as US Foreign Corrupt Practice Act. According to this law, if any US official pays any bribe to the foreign officials, then the officials will be treated as per the consequences of the law. It doesn’t matter whether the bribe is managed in the form of cash or gift, any intention of bribe to the foreign officials will be subjected under this US Act.
The Department of Justice doubts that the officials of Uber have bribed the foreign officials in certain countries to enhance the operation and expansions. Thus, now Uber will be treated as per the US Foreign Corrupt Practice Act. Well, the investigations are still on the way, and there have been no comments from the side of DoJ.
But if this probe will continue, it will reflect the other aggressive strategies of Uber, which were implemented during the expansion in different countries. This American technology based transportation company was founded in 2009. At present, it has managed its services in more than 633 cities and has marked revenue of 6.5 billion dollars in 2016.
Earlier this year, the CEO of Uber – Travis Kalanick stepped down from his position, as various scandals associated with Uber, came into visibility. Well, that was the worst moment for Uber Technologies. He founded the company and had earned a good reputation for Uber in the international market. Kalanick was one of the hard hitting chiefs of Uber. Under his leadership, Uber managed efficient expansions to 77 countries in just eight years.
After Kalanick, Dara Khosrowshahi joined Uber as the CEO. Khosrowshahi was previously the CEO of Expedia. He perfectly understands the intense condition of Uber and accordingly has joined this position. According to him, Uber is an excellent company to work with, and he believes all the issues of Uber will be resolved soon. As he is the present CEO of Uber, he has to tackle himself with all the odds which are moving around the Uber.
Now Khosrowshahi is bound to address two federal investigations. The first one includes the bribery issues with the foreign officials. And the second investigation includes the issues of the company when it used special software to manage the ride services in areas, where the transportation services were banned.
The second issue was launched in May when the government realized that Uber had broken the law by providing ride sharing services to evade the authorities. And since then the investigations are on the way, and no results have been declared yet. Well, it seems to be a tough time for Khosrowshahi, as these are critical federal cases, which involves the government itself. Apart from these federal issues, the new CEO has to also work for the development of Uber.
He has to take some innovative measures to regain the trust of the drivers, who were being underpaid for three years. It is very important to build the trust of the drivers again, to ensure sustainability in New York. The lawsuit against Waymo is also very important for Uber, to earn its reputation back in the field of self-driving car program.
Waymo is the self-driving car division of Google, which blamed the Company for stealing out the trade secrets for self-driving car program. So, here Khosrowshahi has to handle that issue also. All these issues are very critical at the present situation of Uber. But, the only way to get out of these situations is to fight and win the cases.
The market experts predict that the bribery investigation is just a preliminary test, after this issue, the company will be subjected to various bigger scandals. Again, the resignation of Kalanick also hints towards various scandals of Uber. It is still not clear, why the founder cum CEO of the company decided to move away from the position?
All these issues and facts are directly pointing towards the expansion strategies of Uber. It is not that easy for a start-up company to expand in such a manner, but Uber managed all the expansions efficiently. Well, no one knows how the expansions happened, everyone just appreciated the results.
But now when the inner problems are visible to outside, it is highly predicted that Uber has adopted various inappropriate techniques and methods to manage the expansions. Many international expansion strategies of Uber have failed with time. In China and Russia, Uber lost its operations because of the heavy competition from the local start-ups.
In China and Russia, the government supported the local champions to fight the competition and to kick the services of Uber. The same situation happened in France and South Korea when Uber broke the transportation laws and lost the game. In the Philippines, Uber lost its control over the services, and thus it was suspended by the government.
At present, Uber is fighting with different European regulators over the issues of regular taxi services. Thus, overall it is a very tough time for Uber. So, there is a lot more depending on the decisions of Khosrowshahi, and the way he is handling the situations.
