Uber has taken the on demand economy vertical by storm. Formerly called UberCab, the startup was founded in 2009 in San Francisco by Travis Kalanick and Gerrett Camp. Both the founders are serial entrepreneurs as Gerrett earlier co-founded StumbleUpon (a social discovery engine) and Travis founded Red Swoosh which he later sold for $19 million. The name was later on changed to Uber in 2010, which simply means ‘Above’ in German.

Uber has been pioneer in the sharing economy and the concept of Uberification or Uberisation has emerged following the inventory lite on demand uber business model. As popularly known today, Uber is an On Demand Taxi Booking Script startup. It partners with cab drivers and provides a single tap cab booking option to riders for a convenient drive in and around the city. While Uber started with just one city in the United States, it currently operates in 633 cities worldwide. Uber today is worth over $60 billion in private valuation.

In this article we will cover how Uber works, how it got started, its history, Uber business model, revenue model, key revenue metrics, Uber’s unit economics, target customer segments, Uber’s value propositions, key problems and solutions that Uber has for its target market along with the emergence of the ‘Uber for X’ model.

Uber Business Model, through its separate partner and rider apps for different platforms, acts as an aggregation platform (a.k.a. aggregator) that facilitates ride requests within and around respective cities that it operates in. It works in, what is known as, an inventory lite model wherein it does not own any of the taxis and cabs that it has in its network. All the cabs are owned by drivers – drivers sign up with Uber and become part of the Uber network. Riders have a separate app using which they can request for a ride. The nearest driver who is currently active at the time of the request in the nearby vicinity will get the first incoming request notification. In case the driver fails or rejects the request, the notification goes to the other driver available nearby in quick succession until the ride request is entertained.