Note: Despite being infrastructure intensive, the common trait shared by the recent technology driven business models seems to be largely platform oriented, "container-driven" rather than "original content driven", mass oriented and not elite centric.
All the ride hailing services companies around the world continue to lose money. There might be further consolidation into fewer players in the short and medium term future but I have strong confidence in their long term outlook due to the following justifications:-
1) They have advanced engineering capability that can be utilized (and quickly deployed) in other business use cases and adjacent markets.
2) They have captured large pool of end to end consumer data via cookies of the mobile app including consumers' mobility patterns, food preferences, daily routine, behavioral patterns and etc. This data is extremely valuable to any business organisations that want to penetrate, recover or expand any specific consumer segment.
3) There is huge potential in the ride hailing services ecosystem:-
i) Booking/Ordering/Subscription on demand
- hotel/accommodation/restaurant/flight/public transport booking on demand
- food/beverage ordering on demand
- gaming/online entertainment streaming subscription on demand
ii) Advertisement container
- Online advertisement
E.g., Mobile App graphical user interface that could be used to host Google AdSense like online advertisements
- Physical advertisement
E.g., Posters or advertisements that are laminated within car interiors or on external car body.
iii) Alternative location based market research
- commercial viability study of commercial areas/commercial properties by providing accurate assessment of passengers/consumer traffic volume in different timeframe and their demographic characteristics.
4) They are offloading certain social aid responsibilities from the governments by enabling anyone to earn extra bucks on their own and it is very unlikely governments around the world will completely shut down the door on them.
5) They are providing extension to the business model of traditional car manufacturers. Car manufacturers could form partnership with ride haling services companies in selling their vehicles to the ride hailing drivers (normal citizens) with mobile subscription like discount package to drive up the car sales.
6) They businesses have sprung up to cashless payment, microfinancing service, food delivery service, ride hailing services and so on. Most of the ride hailing services companies around the world are doubling down their effort to develop a comprehensive super app/ super platform ecosystem which eventually will enable them to access every facet of consumers' data. This in my opinion is a big data sourcing and consolidation strategy. As data is the new oil in the current Deep Learning era, those who own the biggest pool of strategic big data will be the king maker of almost any sector in the future.
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