If Uber wasn't a VC backed company, they would have been charged with destruction of evidence or similar.
You pay the "extra" or you spend 8h at the police station waiting to be processed. To get raided by police in a corrupt country is the highest moral praise you get for playing it by yhe book .
Rides are 20-40% cheaper elsewhere, why would anyone pay extra for Uber?
If you actually live in developing regions:
1) your income is much lower, and you are quite price sensitive. The Uber price premium (20-40%) hits much harder.
2) the Uber alternatives are noticeably cheaper for the exact same trip.
Regarding your experience, if you were local, that inDrive driver likely would not have tried to extort $1000 MXN out of you. They saw you were a visitor and took advantage of you.
In Nigeria or Uganda there are few tourists, so Uber cannot rely on a stream of price-insensitive travelers to fill their cars. It makes total sense why they struggled in (and gave up on) the local market there.
Since the customer knows less about how much things should cost, they are more likely to be ripped off. People pay a 30% premium to ensure that they dont feel ripped off alone.
(I'm ex-Grab).
Bolt creates 'good' jobs for criminals, but I don't think that is what we want.
[0] - https://www.khaosodenglish.com/tech/2026/05/12/bolt-tightens...
The rumor is that this is becoming politically sensitive, so the US DoW is turning things over to none other than Erik Prince (Blackwater, Xe, etc).
Nigeria is an important source of minerals, for example: lithium.
Africa is being hotly contested right now between ISIS, the US / West, China, and state-local political factions.
China is on track to control around 81% of global spodumene refinery production by 2027.
* People assume that Uber is a big brand in Nigeria and Uganda, this might not be true
* People assume that Uber is popular in these countries, this might also not be true
I've no say in the manner in which they ran/run their business but judging a mega-corporation on lemonade-stand level accounting is a fool's errand.
So 50x Pets.com or 2x Enron.
> judging a mega-corporation on lemonade-stand level accounting is a fool's errand.
Disagree. Unit economics matter and can help you cut through a lot of hype and nonsense. "Where's the money coming from?" is always a good question to ask. Sure, sometimes a megacorp loses money on each transaction and makes it up on float or whatever, but that's at least worth knowing if that's what's going on.
There were ways to get safe drivers in some cases by booking them through the yellow machines. But in the end the company hired private drivers for us. Though personally I would just use the metro and tram a lot too :P If you know where you're going it's not a dangerous place.
Not sure if the taxi situation is still as bad there by the way. I would hope not.
The PMCs that Erik Prince has are primarily doing oilfield and oil worker protection in places like Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Same for mining facilities.
https://www.upstreamonline.com/exclusive/blackwater-founder-...
https://www.theafricareport.com/381915/erik-prince-returns-t...
To be clear, it is the DoD - Department of Defense
I get what you are saying, and you're not exactly wrong, but...
If I called it DoW, people get mad and point it out. If I call it DoD, people get mad and point it out. And if I put both? Fuck all of you, I'm not mentioning both over and over like DoW/DoD is GNU/Linux :)
This reminds me of this bit on a podcast where a tidbit of learned information so blatantly contradicts basic logic.
There's always an explanation, in this case, the tidbit was that "dull knives are more dangerous", because you apply more force when cutting vegetables and can end up hurting yourself, but it's laughably wrong when applied to weapons.
In the case of the tidbit of "uber actually loses money" that might have been relevant in the first years, there's this phenomenon where companies operate at a loss for some time (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_dumping) in order to accumulate market share (i.e a monopoly) and then they increase prices in order to recoup their investment and make profits.
So you read somewhere that "uber actually loses money" and this was from presumably a trusted source, but you failed to account the date of the knowledge, when Uber was somewhat smaller and their margins were smaller, and you read it assuming it applies to the present, so you somehow thought that one of the biggest tech companies in the world, that charges around 30% per trip, and has almost no marginal costs, would operate at a loss.
So I don't want to be offensive, but it's so wrong that it has a comedic quality.
Im morally against Meta but it’s the world’s greatest money printing machine ever conceived. To say they or Uber don’t make money would be too virtue-tainted.
Im trying to say it doesn’t matter what we plebs think about these massive entities. Maybe it should but if we’re talking creating (economic) value, they clearly are.
Unfortunately, the growth potential that software industry generally provides has generally prevented governments for creating and enforcing similar laws for software products and such.
I personally think countries should start sanctioning and international warrants for all large investors and senior executives in a company if something like this happens.
But it won't happen unless US changes their stance on companies being liability shiled.
Sure it should require very exceptional cases but I know companies whose negligence has cost lives of hundreds of people, the reason they and all their investors weren't jailed is the real scam of the democraciez we have gifted ourselves.
My point being it probably feels like less of a luxury for us than for people in the US.
I'd say it's probably the most popular app too. I've never met people who used others.
And they even have a motorcycle ride option that is even cheaper.
And, although Uber Ghana was noticeably more professional when they started, they have relaxed their standards so much in recent years. They are still a tad better than the others, but many drives flit between them and other ride-share companies. A driver does not suddenly become better because they happen to be driving for Uber, although I concede they might u their game based on what is expected of them.
I've ridden on Uber, Lyft, Bolt, Grab, inDrive, Careem, Yandex Go, Gojek, DiDi, Kakao T; and in my experience, outside the US/Europe (plus a few others), Uber is mostly for tourists. The alternatives are cheaper.
> implying everywhere outside of USA and Europe is a developing region
I'm not doing so at all. Those are separate sentences.
And now in places like Seattle, Uber and Lyft are far more expensive than traditional taxis. Taking uber or lyft from the seatac airport to anywhere within a 30 minute driving distance is ridiculously costly now.
Total cost: $AU2.85
Takes FOREVER though :)
The competitors inDrive, Bolt, or Yango almost always beat Uber on price.
You're misinforming here, giving bold statements based on not spending enough time in some of these countries, not knowing the local market well enough.
Roughly speaking, same time of day, same route, same tolls. 25 - 30 dollar Uber, 40 - 60 dollar Taxi.
Its a pretty steep charge for "Understands the laws regarding child restraints"
Also worth noting, age is a protected characteristic in Australia, Uber refuses to do anything about their drivers, but when I have enough evidence of rejected fares I am considering throwing it to some hungry lawyers.
"Cannot carry safely" is valid defence for whatever discrimination suit I believe.
Then again, plenty of Uber drivers carry a booster seat, I wonder why Uber doesn't just have a checkbox for that.
"Child restraints are not required on buses, trains or personalised transport services such as taxi, limousine and ride-booking services. A bus is a motor vehicle that can carry 13 or more people (including the driver)."
Have not spotted a booster seat, or been offered one in an uber in like 3 years with the kiddo.
"Cannot Safely Carry" be hard to justify when the legal definition permits them to just sit in a normal seat with a normal belt.