Uber filed paperwork to go public today (April 11), giving potential investors a glimpse into how the company thinks about itself, and where it hopes to go.
As part of that glimpse, Uber identifies everyone it could think of as a potential competitors. Some of them, like Lyft (which went public last month), make sense, while others, like Apple, Amazon, and grocery stores, are less obvious.
But there’s logic to Uber’s vast and varied list of competitors. The company has a food-delivery service in Uber Eats, is working on autonomous vehicles, runs an on-demand freight service, and has dipped its toe into the bike-sharing market with the acquisition of Jump.
Here’s a list of everyone and everything Uber calls out in its filing:
- Ride-sharing companies: “Lyft, OLA, Careem, Didi, Taxify, and our Yandex.Taxi joint venture.” It also mentioned that it competes with just about every other mode of transit out there, including personal vehicles, “taxicab companies and taxi-hailing services, livery services, and public transportation,” the latter of which it admits “typically provides the lowest-cost transportation option in many cities.”
- Bike and scooter companies: “Motivate (an affiliate of Lyft), Lime, Bird, and Skip.”
- Autonomous-vehicle researchers: All carmakers working on research, as well as “[Alphabet’s] Waymo, Cruise Automation, Tesla, Apple, Zoox, Aptiv, May Mobility, Pronto.ai, Aurora, and Nuro, whose offerings may prove more effective than our autonomous vehicle technologies.”
- Delivery companies: ”GrubHub, DoorDash, Deliveroo, Swiggy, Postmates, Zomato, Delivery Hero, Just Eat, Takeaway.com, and Amazon.” It added that it sees Uber Eats as competing with “restaurants, meal kit delivery services, grocery delivery services, and traditional grocers.”
- Freight companies: As it moves into trucking, it’s taking on competition like “C.H. Robinson, Total Quality Logistics, XPO Logistics, Convoy, Echo Global Logistics, Coyote, Transfix, DHL, and NEXT Trucking.”
Uber also mentions that it’s “contractually restricted” from competing in China until August 2023 and Russia until February 2025 because of deals it signed with affiliates it works with in those regions.