Uber Heading Into Ecommerce

Uber Technologies Inc. has an upcoming IPO, where it hopes for an evaluation of over $80 billion dollars. The corporation’s most recent venture is Uber Freight. Basically, between a customer’s house and the e-commerce website from which they purchase from, there is a long distribution chain. Uber sees the obvious potential money stream in this and wants to make money off of it. Basically, they are building the Uber Freight branch of the company to be a type of “marketplace that seamlessly connects connects shippers and carriers. This branch of Uber launched in May of 2017, and since then, it has nearly 40,000 carriers, and worked with over 1000 shippers. As well as it’s food delivery division, Uber Eats, Uber considers the freight business to be a high-potential for earnings business. Which makes plenty of sense, because in the last quarter of 2018, Uber Freight made over $125 million.

On April 29, 2019, they also let the world know about a partnership with SAP, a German software corporation. The partnership involves the merge of Freight with SAP’S Logistics Business Network. “Finding and booking freight can be the most expensive and often the most complex piece of the supply chain. This combined solution will remove roadblocks and offers a simpler, more automated approach that streamlines operations, delivers tangible cost savings and ultimately creates a better customer experience. Adding Uber Freight to our SAP Logistics Business Network will help our customers optimize their logistics and put their customers at the heart of their digital supply chain.” said Hala Zeine, the president of SAP Digital Supply Chain.

It’s evident that Uber is taking some notes out of Amazon’s playbook. Uber hopes to achieve the same E-commerce success, as Amazon built their giant of a technology company on the spine of books. Uber wants to branch out into separate branches, unrelated to the driving service, but ultimately all connected with E-commerce. The E-Commerce business is booming at an extremely rapid pace, with online sales being 10% of total sales in the U.S this year. That figure will rise to 17% by 2022. Due to these advancements in E-Commerce, the field of logistics is also rapidly increasing, which makes it a great time for Uber to buy in.