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On the Blacklane: Last Mile Connectivity Revolutionised

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Blacklane allows thousands of people to get home safe and sound every day. The company connects all these passengers to an insured fleet of professional drivers. Blacklane offers phenomenally professional driver service in over 50 countries and does it at affordable prices. As soon as you land at your airport, you can have your driver ready to go. This means no more delays, reaching meetings late and no more inconvenience. So how did the revolutionary idea come to be, and what’s the secret behind its success? Here’s a look at everything you need to know about Blacklane and the service they provide.

Making Their Presence Felt

Blacklane CEO Jens Wohltorf co-founded this innovative company with Frank Steuer. The two-man team which started their business from a one-room office in Berlin now employs more than 200 people. Their small company grew into an enterprise with a solid presence in over 185 cities. They have tie-ups with more than 300 airports, much more than what Uber or Lyft has! So what’s the idea behind this wonderful company?

Jens Wohltorf - Co Founder of Blacklane - Your Tech Story
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Story Behind the Idea

The co-founder Jens Wohltorf is an ex-Boston Consulting Group employee. Over at BCG, he made his way up the ranks and became the manager of their Berlin office, before calling it quits. In 2011, shortly after having received a promotion, Wohltorf stepped down to build his dream company. He got together with his old friend from University, Frank and then set the wheels in motion for Blacklane.

The duo had been planning and conceptualizing since 2009, analyzing the field and looking for opportunities. The duo always knew they wanted to work together, ever since their college days, and finally got their wish. When they saw that taxi apps were showing up on the Playstore, they took their chance. Also, traveling for BCG work had opened Wohltorf’s eyes to the need for professional car services.

Within the company, Wohltorf became the business guy while Frank handled the technical side of things. However, Wohltorf is industrial engineering with a Ph.D. in telecommunications. The first customer for the pair’s company was Wohltorf ‘s own brother and the business took off. The pair relied on online marketing to canvas customers landing in Berlin. 

Growth and Finance

In the beginning, the duo did most of the work manually and even took 12-hour shifts to handle driver and passenger queries. The first employees were added in early 2012 and by the end of the year, the company had expanded to 15 cities in Germany. Soon enough, the pair internationalized the business, by adding both the British pound and US dollar within payment methods. The website followed suit, by turning multi-lingual and offering English, German and French. By going international so early on in their business, the company was able to scale effectively later on. 

In 2013, the duo took on a challenge in the form of “Mission 100” which required them to add 100 new cities within 100 business days. This initiative helped them in reducing their launch time by over 75%. Once the duo started seeing returns, they began to look for investors.

Blacklane raised over 22 million euros via six funding rounds with Daimler being the main investor. This inflow of capital led to large-scale expansion and development, and soon enough, the company was operational in over 50 countries. Blacklane decided to have just one office in Berlin to help with centralizing power. 

Blacklane Vs Uber

All the drivers employed by Blacklane are licensed and insured, and just like Uber, the company owns no cars. The cars are not theirs, and neither are the drivers. Instead, the company acts as a bridge between the customers and the drivers, by partnering with local chauffeur services. This way, the team has been able to build a fleet of esteemed drivers in every city they operate. This ensures that there are no conflicts, regulatory issues or strikes. 

The biggest difference between Blacklane and Uber is that their pricing is fixed and all-inclusive. Hence, customers know exactly how much to expect and there are no hidden fees or surges in pricing. Also, unlike Uber, Blacklane works as a member of the travel value chain. Furthermore, they provide multi-lingual support to customers around the clock and also provide a booking guarantee. 

Further Growth and Future Plans of Blacklane

Recently, 64 new cities in the Asia-Pacific brought them to over 250 cities worldwide, improving their market presence significantly. The company is looking to expand further by partnering with flight reservation pioneers Amadeus. Blacklane will then become a part of the flight booking industry, and also plan on providing rooms to customers. Their transparent website and ease of doing business have played a big role in helping the company scale such heights.

Being extremely customer-friendly by allowing even one-hour cancellations makes them a service people love to use. The company plans on integrating with more airlines, hotels and online travel agencies to improve their reach and visibility. The company helps take all the stress out of traveling for business travelers who have other things to worry about. With the world becoming a smaller place every day, such services will help people settle in faster than ever before.

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Uber Lays off Another 350; Ensures it would be the Last Cut

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Despite Uber going public this year, the year has not been a very good one for the company. The IPO did not work out as it was expected to, and the company had to lay off a large number of staff twice this year. And the process of laying off the employees did not stop there. The company has announced that it is again cutting around 350 employees from various departments of the company. These departments include the Eats, performance marketing, Advanced Technologies Group, recruiting, various teams within the global rides, etc.

Around three months (maybe less) ago, the company had laid off around 400 jobs for people from its marketing team, and almost a month ago, 450 jobs were cut from the product and engineering teams. This time, the number of employees is a bit less than earlier, but more departments have been affected by the decision, and the company is claiming that it would be the last time when it will be laying off the staff.

This number is 1.5% of Uber’s total employees, but still, since it is happening third time this year, this is not good for the repo of the company. along with cutting the jobs, it has also made some shuffling of locations for its staff as well.

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Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent emails to the Uber employees, where he wrote, “Days like today are tough for us all, and the ELT and I will do everything we can to make certain that we won’t need or have another day like this ahead of us. We all have to play a part by establishing a new normal in how we work: identifying and eliminating duplicate work, upholding high standards for performance, giving direct feedback and taking action when expectations aren’t being met, and eliminating the bureaucracy that tends to creep as companies grow.”

The company has also cut a small percentage of jobs in its self-driving car unit. The people working in the US and Canada have been most affected by the decision.

Uber has been investing a lot to expand its services and business around the world. But 2019 have surely been the most challenging year for the company. This year in the second quarter Uber reported its biggest loss till date, i.e. $5.2 billion, which is double the loss it had experienced last year. So to cope-up with the changing market and new trends, the company has to take some serious steps.

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Uber Suffers a slow Growth and a $5.2 Billion Loss as it Closed Q2 2019

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Uber just had its IPO, and it does not seem that the company is earning the expected profits. The company on Thursday revealed its second quarterly earnings after the IPO and has reported a loss of worth $5.2 billion. Though the earned revenue for the second quarter earned is $3.17 billion, it is still less than the expected revenues, i.e. $3.36 billion.

The price of Uber’s every share had gone down to $42.98 per share from its IPO price, i.e. $45, and the company closed the quarter at 9%. The reported net loss is the biggest loss that the company has ever gone through.

Recently Lyft also came out with its revenue for the Q2 2019 and also reported a loss of $644 million. Being smaller in size, this loss for the company is equally also huge. If we took out the various expenses, like Uber mentioned, “stock-based compensation expenses for employees”, the two are still at loss, as Uber has lost around a $1.3 billion, which is 30% more than last year. And, the total loss for Lyft is around $197 million.

Uber IPO
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Uber has just earned a 14% growth up from its last year’s growth, whereas, Lyft has reported a 72% more growth compared to its last year’s growth, i.e. an $867 million.

“While we will continue to invest aggressively in growth, we also want it to be healthy growth, and this quarter we made good progress in that direction,” said the Uber chief financial officer Nelson Chai.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also made a similar statement and said, “We’re very confident that this company, at maturity, can be cash-flow positive.” Dara also said while talking to reporters, “We think that 2019 will be our peak investment year and we think that 2020, 2021, you’ll see losses come down. I think our break-even is something that we can push the company to break even if we really wanted to frankly.”

But is the company really experiencing any growth? In recent years, the pace of growth for the company has quite slowed down. Also, it had fired over 400 employees during the IPO as well. There have been more losses than profits in the entire journey of Uber, and it makes its position questionable in front of the investors.

Uber Finally Showcases the Internal Design of its Ride Sharing Air Taxi

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Uber is excited for the launch of its another arm, i.e. Uber Air, and have been working to finalise the design for its air taxies. Finally, after going back and forth with various designs, Uber has teased a reference design for its air taxi, which is more like the design of a spacious helicopter.

Uber Air
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The company revealed the reference design at its third annual Elevate conference, an event based on flying taxies, going on in Washington DC, started on June 11th. The showcased design represents how the company envisions its aerial taxis’ internal design to look like.

The company has taken the initiative of offering air taxies to help in reducing the congestion and traffic on the roads and plans to kick off the service starting from 2023. Since there is a lot of time left for the launch of Uber Air, the company took the pains to build a simulated design of the air taxi, to showcase the details of its internal design.

For the design, the company has partnered with aircraft interior designer Safran Cabin. The air taxi has got four seats, arranged in pairs in two rows. Behind the backseat, the passengers will get the space to place their luggage. Since the taxi is for short rides, the company has not paid much of efforts in embedding luxuries to it. The aerial taxi has to comply with the eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) standards, so the design has been kept sleek and simple.

“Together with Safran Cabin, we’ve designed for the first time in history, a bespoke aircraft cabin that is truly mission-driven for aerial ridesharing on Uber Air. Starting with the customer experience, it’s highly considered from the inside-out, yet extensible across different fuselage profiles, and carefully engineered with a path to certification.” Uber Elevate’s Head of Design, John Badalamenti, said in a statement.

Uber is making quite the efforts to become one supreme transportation company, and for its aerial taxies, it has even got companies, like Boeing, on board. Along with Boeing Uber has also partnered with Bell Helicopters and Jaunt.

At the event, the company also revealed the designs of the Skyports it will be building for the passengers to get a Uber Air. Uber even reported that it will be building its first non-US Skyport in Melbourne Australia, the city becoming the third official pilot city for Uber Air, after Dallas and Los Angeles.

Uber Starts Trialing for App-Based e-Bike Service for its London Users

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The UK is familiar with bicycle hailing services, Lime being the biggest player in the field in the country. After seeing many other bike hailing services run successfully, the UK is now ready to welcome Uber with its new e-bike hiring service. Uber has revealed that it is going to start trialling its electric bike hailing service with 350 of its Jump electric bikes in the London borough of Islington.

Uber also plans to expand into the other part of the London city after successfully completing the trial for a certain period of time. The company will be launching 350 bright red colour Jump bicycles on the streets of London for the trial. The users will be able to find and unlock the bicycle through the Uber app.

The Uber app will show the locations from where the users can get those bikes, charge them with 1 Pound to unlock the bike, guide the users to their destinations through the app’s map, and show them the parking locations after they reach the destination. After the users unlock the bike, they will be charged 12p per minute during the ride, following a five-minute free ride on the e-bike. There are some possibilities that Uber may provide the users with offers and discounts at the beginning, as it has been doing for all its services in the world.

There will be an up 25 pound of penalty for the users who will be parking the bikes away from the provided parking areas, or end the trip at a no parking zone. Though London has already got such bike-hailing services including Mobike and Boris Bikes, it will be interesting to see how Uber emerges midst such a rivalry in the field.

Almost a year ago, the company had almost lost its taxi license to drive on the streets of London, but now the company is all set to revive its services by implanting its Jump e-bikes on the roads of London. The company is already successfully running its Jump e-bike hiring services in the countries, including the US, Canada, Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, Paris, etc.

Drivers Planning a Strike Against Uber and Lyft on Wednesday to Get Better Wages and Job Security

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Uber is prepping up to go Public on Friday, i.e. on 10th May, but there is something else that the Uber drivers are planning for. There has been a lot of fuss about the forthcoming IPO for both cab-riding services, Uber and Lyft, and finally, when both are about to go public, the New York Taxi Workers Association is calling on U.S.-based drivers to come in front and participate in a two hours strike on Wednesday.

Almost three days ago, a group of drivers from the UK had also announced that they will be having a 9 hours long boycott of the app on Wednesday over the wages. And now, the NYTWA is also encouraging the Uber drivers to join in the protest for two hours, on Wednesday between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m.

The protest is against the two ride-hailing services, and the agenda is to get a better basic wage as well as job security for the Uber drivers. Currently, the Uber drivers are getting a $17 hourly wage, which they want to increase to a better offer. The main motive of the protestors is to coincide with the Uber’s IPO so that the companies take notice of their issue.

“In the IPO filing, Uber said drivers will only get more dissatisfied because they plan to cut our pay and stop incentives. We don’t want our wages to stay just a minimum. We want Uber to answer to us, not to investors. The gig economy is all about exploiting workers by taking away our rights. It has to stop. Uber is the worst actor in the gig economy.” NYTWA member Sonam Lama said in a press release.

Along with New York, the drivers in other cities also are looking forward to the protest. In San Francisco, the drivers have planned to shut off the app for 12 hours and will be protesting at the Uber’s HQ.

On the entire matter, an Uber spokesperson said, “Drivers are at the heart of our service, we can’t succeed without them and thousands of people come into work at Uber every day focused on how to make their experience better, on and off the road. Whether it’s more consistent earnings, stronger insurance protections or fully funded four-year degrees for drivers or their families, we’ll continue working to improve the experience for and with drivers.”

On the other hand, the drivers are claiming that the two companies are working on its PR and is always showing off on how well these two companies treat their drivers. But it is not at all true.

With upcoming IPO Uber is seeking a valuation of $84 billion and with this, the drivers and the other employees of the company are also looking forward to getting a hike in their basic wages.