From Iran to Uber CEO | Nikhil Kamath x Dara Khosrowshahi | People by WTF | Ep. 14

29:24the way to gather information or go to Google, which I think can be quite frustrating, you know, luxury vacation in Europe, like the results you get are trash, in my opinion. With LLMs now, actually, their ability to gather the information and bring you unexpected results, et cetera, I think travel discovery is going to get much, much better, and it's much better today. Travel booking, I think agents can help you as well. And then I think one area that I think Uber's really good at that I think the experience can improve significantly is your in-market experience. You know, why is it that when you land and you take the Uber to your hotel, you even need to check in, right?

30:14We should, we have your phone. We know where you are. Come into the room. You know, you're, why can't it be? you're in room, you know, 30, 31E, and just go up there, you already checked in, and go in, you know, why do I need to sit there and, you know, have the perfectly nice person ask me if I had a nice flight, and, you know, here's my room, et cetera. I think the in-market experience is something that hasn't been innovated on at all, and it's something that could improve as well. Yeah, I'm able to today discover, say I'm coming to San Francisco. Yes. and I want to figure out which hotel suits my needs, I can enter my taste each time and an agent will recommend something.

30:59But is there one place where I don't have to think and an agent can do everything? I don't think there's one soil for it today. No. And there definitely isn't one place today. I do think the cost of a bad decision in travel is very high. Yeah. So I don't think you're going to get to a place, and I'm certainly not going to get to a place where I tell an agent to find me a hotel in San Francisco and just book it. And then, you know, on the day when I arrive there, I'm like, where am I going? Yeah. But I think agents can do a great job of reducing, you know, that list, that on Expedia, you look at the 50 hotels and then you're filtering for, you know, maybe where you're looking or the class of hotels.

31:46it can collate, it can give you the three hotels that you're most likely to like based on your historical experiences. So I think there's this in-between space, and I think agents can do a great job in that in-between space, but I think that final decision, at least for me, is going to be up to you. But that collation, that kind of bringing everything together, that could be a very, very high utility. If you had an idea to build something around travel, sitting on the board of Expedia and running Uber at the same time, where do you build what?

32:23I think I would build, I would not go after the I, would not go after the inspiration side because I think the inspiration side, thank you very much, is going to be served really, really well by an open AI or a Google. They're collecting all the information. They're going to have lots of context about who you and I are. And the way people get inspired, it's so dispersed that it's going to be very difficult for you to build one service that, let's say, services 70 % of your inspiration. And I really do think that Google, OpenAI, other LLMs are going to just get better and better here. But I think the agentic search, booking experience, and then in-market experience to make it a very smooth handoff from one experience to the other, I think that's something that I would focus on with my Expedia and Uber hat on at the same time.

33:29Something interesting to build, though. Yeah, definitely. I feel like a lot of opportunity here. It's not solved for at all. Someone's going to get it right. And I do think one challenge in terms of how the industry is constructed right now is that the OTAs, the Booking.coms, the Expedias of the world, they are very self-interested in making sure that you book within their supply base. And at the same time, outside of that supply base, they're organizing a ton of content, prices, et cetera, features, and information. So there's utility in that. The ultimate solution is going to be an agent that can sit above it all and can kind of scour the internet and scour all the booking services and then surface the results, which may be a mix and match of all of them for you based on your tastes.

34:20So I don't know, actually, and I hope it's Expedia because I'm on the board and I love the company. I hope it'll be Expedia who puts it all together. But there could be kind of an umbrella agent who is truly representing your interests versus Expedia's interest. Now, if Expedia does a great job, they will maybe expand or they will, you know, over a period of time, amalgamate all the content on the web. So all the travel content on the web, booking content on the web. So that super agent doesn't add much value. When you have an umbrella agent, soon you'll have another and then another. Yeah. So will it come down to who is able to extrapolate your taste?

35:02and can someone's taste be deciphered from past data, you think? I think it's going to be a combination of past data. I think that you want an agent that will do some exploration for you. So for example, when we are showing you the restaurants that you're likely to want to pick on Uber Eats, if all we show you is the ones that you're most likely to or based on what you've done in the past, then we're missing that surprise. We're missing that explore. So you want an agent that's a combination of explore and exploit. I think that's going to be, so I don't think it's just going to be on your past taste, but it'll be putting your past taste with other people who look like you and then surprising you with some new choices as well.

35:48I think that's ultimately going to be the winner. Ultimately, so much will come down to taste, right? In this world. Well, listen, taste, convenience, price, right? I mean, you and I may be lucky enough where taste is the overriding factor, but there may be context for you, right? If you're coming to San Francisco and it's midweek, you may want a cheap, decent place close to the Uber offices, right? And that's a different context than if you are going to go to Napa for the weekend where you want an experience either for yourself, for yourself and friends or loved ones. So I do think that it's not as simple in terms of taste.

36:33It's based on the context of what you're solving for, you know, your objective function. And your objective function is going to change based on the context of what the goal of that trip is. So Dara, I was trying to define what Uber is today. You mentioned Barry and Match.com. Yeah. Are you Match.com in a different way? I mean, to some extent, we're bringing, obviously, riders and drivers together, and we're trying to meet match eaters with our restaurant partners with a courier. So there is some of that. But listen, I think one way that I think about it from a consumer standpoint, you know, Uber is a different thing to Uber, to different people.

37:19For the consumer, I really want Uber to be like that operating system for your everyday life. You know, we make your everyday life a little bit easier. We give you a little bit of time and convenience back in terms of where you want to go, what you want to eat, more and more what you want, right? If you want that iPhone, same day, we'll do that for you. For our driver and courier partners, we are a source of work and a source of earnings based on your own needs. now, and you're going to balance your needs based on the commercial objectives as well. If your need is that I don't want to give rides at 2 a.m.

38:01in the morning, you may not make much money. So there's a combination of the marketplace combines when you want to work with the realities of the commercial objectives. Hey, 9 p.m. Friday night, you may not want to work, but it's a great time to work in San Francisco. And then for restaurant partners, we're a trusted partner in bringing a source of demand in terms of delivery and now retail and groceries that's only going to grow. What we see is the convenience that we offer in terms of delivery of starting food. But everything, that convenience is absolutely dynamite. It's something that people want all over the world.

38:43And as they experience it, more and more people want it. This is funny, but I got in last evening. Hope you took an Uber. No, I have a driver here. But I wanted an adapter. I'm using a couple of laptops which have India plug points. Sure. And I needed a travel adapter. And at 8.30 p.m., I was trying to like ideate. My hotel didn't have one. Sure.

39:15Target, Best Buy shuts down at 8 p.m. Walgreens had one store which was open up until 10 p.m. I tried to download Instacart on my phone, which said I couldn't do it unless I have a U.S. number. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. Did you try Eats? Does Uber Eats have travel adapters? Yes. Yeah? Yes. And can I have an international number? That's one of the issues with actually the name, right? When we wanted to expand from food to grocery and other items, we actually tested as Uber Eats the right name with consumers. And we found that consumers thought that it would carry. And you've seen a lot of our branding.

39:58Well, you may not have seen it because in India we don't have Uber Eats, unfortunately. You sold it in 2020, right? Yes, yes. We partnered there. We didn't think we could win in India. We wanted to really focus on mobility. but Eats now has groceries, it's got retail, and I'll bet you, you could have found that travel adapter. So lesson learned for you next time. And by the way, Eats is now available on the Rides app too. Nice. You sold Uber Eats to Zomato for 400, 500 million. I think you had a 10 % equity in Zomato in turn. They got a great deal. Yeah. And then you got out of Zomato altogether as well.

40:38Yes. Which is called Eternal now. I didn't know that. They changed the name of the company. Why is that? Why did you get out? What did you understand or learn about the Indian market? We got out not because of some deep thought as it relates to the Indian market, but my belief that we're not a holding company. We're not an investment company. That is not my core competency to take Uber, investors, capital, and invest it really well. My competency is to build a big operating business that over a period of time grows top line, brings in lots of consumers all over the world, and ultimately throws off a lot of profitability and we can build a share price.

41:27My skill in terms of investment is not going to be a significant factor in the value creation here. So I believe in kind of sticking, could I have had a wonderful intellectual time on trying to determine if I should sell Zomato now or later, 10 years from now? Sure, but that's not my core competence. So I like to stick to my core competence. Would you buy Zomato today? I don't know. I haven't looked at it, actually. Right. Yeah. I mean, they've done a great job. The food delivery business and now the instant grocery business and like Blinkit, I've heard, is actually larger than the core Zomato business was, right?

42:07Yeah, growing faster. Yeah, yeah, very much so. So Uber is about 57 % mobility, 30 % delivery. For today, I'm going to ignore freight because I think it's growing at the lowest pace as well. I get it, yes. And I'm going to be a 20-year-old boy or girl in India trying to build a business in either mobility, delivery, quick commerce. And maybe we get advice from Dara as to what to build and what the opportunities are. Oh, that's a, well, first I'd say don't try to build anything against Uber because we'll kick your ass. And you can buy us later. How big are network effects? Because you're already in so many markets and so big, I'm guessing it's very hard to service a customer who wants to hire an Uber at 3 a.m.

42:55and 6 p.m. Unless you have network, yeah. The network effects are very, very significant. Now, and so I do think that to invest in and build the required liquidity on both sides of the market is going to be very, very difficult. Now, the network effects, to some extent, can be local, right? So the liquidity that we have in Bangalore may be different from the liquidity that we have in Hyderabad. So I do think that there's an opportunity, and maybe Rapido took advantage of that opportunity, of building out services in smaller cities and then building out liquidity in a way that's not quite as expensive because you're not trying to take on all of India, but go city by city by city and then get into larger cities.

43:44They started with, I think, two-wheelers and three-wheelers. They're trying to get into autos, et cetera. So I think if you find a niche where you believe that you can build liquid, supply and demand on a local basis, and then you can rinse and repeat that over and over again. It's essentially what Travis did with Uber when he founded it. That is something that could work. And if you get large enough, maybe then, and it might be a different segment, let's say intercity, for example, or some other segment that isn't particularly well-served by the Ubers of the world or the Zomatas of the world or some of the other players, then maybe you can build something that could either compete with them or could be bought by them.

44:28That's an interesting insight. I've watched a bunch of your interviews. I'm sorry. No, they were actually really nice. Thank you. Travis, they say that in society today, as a leader, you're either awe-inspiring, dogmatic, or you're somebody who builds consensus, is more relatable per se. Have you had to project a more relatable image because you have to overcompensate for what Travis was projecting? One thing that I really believe in is I don't think it works if you're trying to be someone other than who you are. You know, people come to me and they ask me for leadership advice. And the first piece of advice that I give them is be true to yourself.

45:21Because the minute you're not true to yourself, People will smell that a mile off if you're not authentic. You know, this is a word that people mean authentic, et cetera. What does it mean? It's just like, be true to who you are. I am the youngest brother of a really big family. We have like thousands of cousins around. And in Iran, community and family is so important. Nobody's the star. And if you're the star, you're going to be putting your place. You know, I'm a fancy, fancy CEO. here. But when I go to my family, I'm just one of the younger cousins and I'm no big deal. And I love it. It's such a relief to be that person who I just, that's my comfort zone.

46:09So I tend to be more collaborative. You know, I, when I played sports, I would play defense. I always played team sports. I didn't want to win as an individual. I love the feeling of winning as a team. I don't want to be there celebrating by myself. I want to celebrate with my team. So that is who I am and maybe that's one of the reasons why I wound up here. And actually my challenge as a leader is to get out of that collaborative mode sometimes and to really drive. And for example, I'll give you a little story and it's a funny story but it just taught me a lot. We were, during COVID, and the U.S.

46:52COVID was devastating to our business. Mobility was 90 % of our business and by far, you know, the profitable piece of the business. And overnight, we lost 80, 85 % of our volume. Couldn't be worse. And we went from, we were already losing$2 billion a year. We went from losing$2 billion a year to like losing$4 billion a year. It was a disaster. And it became very clear that we had to undergo layoffs. Not a fun time. I never thought I'd come to Uber to lay off thousands of people. And me being me, I was talking to my team. What do you think we should do? What are the levels? Where should we? I didn't want to do a peanut butter kind of a layoff, et cetera.

47:34I want to be focused. And I would do meeting after meeting after meeting with my team because I wanted them all included, and I wanted to hear what they had to say. And Nelson Che, my CFO at the time, we were talking, and he's like, Dari, you know, we have a lot of respect for you and you're a really good person. And we've talked about this a lot. Why don't you just tell us what you want to do? Because you tell us what you want to do, we're right behind you. And I was like, my God. Like sometimes collaboration, et cetera, talking about things doesn't help. And as a leader, you have to go from peacetime collaboration mode to wartime.

48:16Like, I am the leader. I'm the general. I'm going to make a decision mode. And there, like, I didn't sleep that much that night. But the next day, I got everyone together. I'm like, here's what we're going to do. We cut deep in operations. We cut less deep on tech. It was very, very difficult. But, like, we went, and everyone was behind me. And while it was a really, really difficult time, to some extent, that brought the team together. It allowed Uber Eats to grow to incredible levels. And I think it made us a better company. I would never, ever want to go through that again, but it made us a better company.

48:53So for me, my general comfort zone is collaboration, working with the team, listening to the team. But then what I've learned is there are certain circumstances where you have to switch your modes. And so I'll switch from collaboration to decision, here's what we're going to do. And because my team sees me listening, collaborating most of the time, I think they give me credit when I say, all right, we're going to go this way. So it's who I am. I've been noticing, I might be wrong in this, in a David versus Goliath world, David seems to have started winning quite often, which kind of doesn't make sense because we are largely a trust deficit planet.

49:43But a lot of people I know, I think it's weirdly correlated to affluence. Want to pick the smaller guy, the smaller brand, individuals over corporations. In such a world, I get that relatable makes a lot more sense than awe-inspiring dogmatic. But how does a company like Uber, which is 40 plus billion in revenue and millions of rides and employees and all of that, how do you evolve to project the David image while you already have all of this? I do think that there is, first of all, I feel like David when we're competing in a technology world of trillion-dollar-plus companies, right? So while we may be a larger company, I don't feel like we're a big company at Uber.

50:42we've done well as a company, but I think there's so much more that we can do. So I see our shortcomings much more than our accomplishments. And I think that there is, it's part of the culture of the company, which is not to overestimate ourselves and to act like a disruptor, et cetera. Do you do that consciously? Project vulnerability? Goliath doesn't look like... I think it's kind of who I am. It goes back to my family. there's, my father was like a really modest person. And he would, the minute I kind of thought I was hot shit, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, you know, he put me, you know, he would just throw me in my place.

51:27So I think part of it is who I am. I think part of it is where Uber came from. Remember, like we were the upstarts. Like this company wouldn't exist if we weren't challenging the status quo. But how do you continue to look like the upstart tomorrow if the world picks David? I hope so. Now, I would tell you that internally, we are upstarts, and I want to have that upstart mentality here. We do have to recognize the power that we have. And I do think that's a mistake that Uber made early on, which is we had to fight for our lives. But then at some point, you know, we did get large. We had incredible impact in the cities in which we operated with in.

52:14And that does come with responsibility. And so I do think there's this weird kind of dualism about our identity, which is internally, we want to feel like upstarts all the time. Like every single day we're fighting for our lives. we hire from a lot of big tech companies and we say like, come here you're going to work your ass off you'll probably make a little bit less money but you're going to the work that you do can truly an individual engineer at Uber can have huge effect across the company and that is really cool and at the same time the effect that you have on the company also has an effect on society too because we are big and so there's this dualism that you have to keep within Uber which is within these walls we're going to act like a startup but outside of the walls and discussions we have with regulators and discussions that we have with our drivers our couriers, our restaurants we're a big company and that does come with responsibility and it means that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should This is some advice I want personally at some point Uber had different teams attacking different cities for market share.

53:39And these teams almost competed with each other and net-net it seemed to work well for Uber. I tend to do this very organically with people I have. I don't know if it's good in the long run or bad, but I make them compete with each other. Sure. What have you learned? Does it work? it works as a growth tactic but it doesn't scale so to some extent what you want to do is you want to have these humans and teams compete against each other to hack your way into the best solution possible then after they get to that best solution possible you then have to come in and automate that solution through algos, through engineering, etc.

54:26And then what was the frontier becomes a part of the core and then you move to the next frontier. So that's kind of the design spec that we have. The team is actually very, very entrepreneurial. Uber Teens, to some extent, was an amalgamation of a bunch of technologies that we built. And our CPO, Sachin, he was obsessed with that idea. He said, well, we have a bunch of safety functionality here. We can put together teams with our safest drivers. We have tracking functionality here. I'm going to put this whole thing together and hack together what you call this team solution. And you hack it, you move quickly, you see if there's product market fit, and then once you see the signal that there's product market fit, you do have to systematize it.

55:16because if you don't systematize it, you can't scale. So you have to have both muscles within the organization. But it's a good way to discover something fast. Totally. You don't want to. The signal, we don't do this anymore, but at Expedia in the olden days, we put a button on the website just to see if there's demand for that button, and someone would click it. They'd be like, oh, I'm sorry, it's not working right now. And we're just doing it to collect signal. That's the biggest hack possible, right? So, and once you see that product market fit, you got to build behind it. And some companies make the mistake of not building behind it and you can get away with it for a while, but at some point, the system falls apart.

55:58When you speak about DoorDash or when you spoke about Zomato right now, you complimented them, praised them. I heard you on an interview speaking about how DoorDash went after the suburbs and you guys missed out. you praising competition, is that a way to appear more David in a David versus Goliath world again? It's not an act. Right. I think DoorDash is a really great company. I don't like them. Yeah. But they make us better. And they're a worthy competitor, global competitor. They're beating us right now in the U.S., but not for long. And we're beating them outside the U.S. And the two companies going against each other makes both companies better and actually builds a better service for consumers and couriers and restaurants all over the world.

56:57I think the humility that we talked about before, I think that actually creates a strength because you're curious. You're not overconfident. You don't think like you're the best in the world. You're curious about what others are doing. And for me, it motivates me and drives me to be better. You know, if I say DoorDash is a good competitor, and they are a good competitor, that's motivation for me and my team to be better. You said outside U.S. you're beating them and they're beating you here. Not for long, though. Does India as a market matter, Dara? You once observed when you were there that Indians are very demanding and they don't want to pay for anything.

57:40That comment cost me. It matters hugely for us. India is now our third largest market in terms of mobility trips. We've got, I think, over 1.4 million now drivers, auto, two-wheelers, three-wheelers, and four-wheelers in India. The growth there is spectacular. I think India is already one of the great countries in the world, but if you look at it as a share of GDP, it's only going to increase. The leadership there is amazing. And so much of our talent pool, not just in India, but all over the world, comes from Indian descent as well. So India is, you know, it is a absolute must win for Uber, not just tomorrow, but 10 years from now.

58:31I'm going to go back to being a 20-year-old who's starting a business in this industry. You know, I say don't start one in this industry. Go try something else. How do I recognize the opportunity versus TAM? Like the total addressable market. Like if I want to start quick commerce in India, and the cost of delivery is say 20 rupees or 30 rupees or 50 rupees. If the total addressable market that can afford a product like that in India be 20 million people or 50 million people, where is the number right? A lot of the spend, a lot of consumption in India is still going towards groceries, as much as 50, 60%.

59:17So how do I justify to myself that my business idea is sound, that I'm going to charge 50 rupees a delivery? How many people do I model for? Where does that fit come across geographies? I say you're way overthinking it. You know, businesses never... businesses that succeed are always adapting and adjusting. and adjusting. So what I tell you is, figure out if there's product market fit in that narrow segment. Call it the 50. And by the way, if it's narrow, that's great. Because then the big players are probably not going to come after it. It's a segment where you can add value and a segment where you can own.

1:00:01And then if you establish product market fit and you build a business there, then you can go to the next area, to the next area, to the next area. But if my market size is only 20 million people who can afford it, still build it? Build it as long as there's product market fit in terms of unit economics that makes sense. And once you get to those 20 million people, you're going to find an adjacency to get into, and then you'll find another adjacency, and you'll find another. But then I'm competing with people like you who already are sitting on the network effects. Yeah, but the big TAMs are going to be taking.

1:00:35So actually, specifically, you should go after the small TAMs and the small opportunities where you can create a network effect without enormous investments either in technology or development or monies. You actually specifically should go after the small TAMs and then work your way into the adjacencies over a period of time. I wasn't around, but at the time, when Uber Eats was conceived of, I think it was Jason Droege and Travis, they were like driving around a bunch of cars with burritos in the trunk of that car. It was like a manifestation of mobility, a very close manifestation. And you look at where delivery has gone and how large it's become.

1:01:20You know, I don't think they would have ever predicted that. So you just get one step to the next step to the next step. I don't believe in overthinking TAM. Plenty of TAMs are like you build those for IR and you build those to raise money. You may want to create this wonderful, dramatic tamp to go raise a couple million bucks, but that's not what should be processing through your mind. It should be, can I build a service that has eventually strong unit economics that then I can build on top of? Quick commerce seems to have sidestepped the US for a long time. I think you went to big box retail and then you went to another thing altogether.

1:01:57Yeah. Not necessarily competing on, I will deliver in six minutes, I will deliver in seven, and I will deliver in eight. Why is that? Because the cost of labor in the US is too high. So that's my take, which is with quick commerce, you can't automate that much because the cost of the automation doesn't bear out in a small box. So you have to use human labor. And so in markets where the cost of human labor is not there and the concentration of customers isn't there, you get a fail, which is, for example, let's say in the U.S. You know, I think that GoPuff is making a good run at it, but you look at the development of that market versus Blinkit or some of the other developing markets, it is absolutely working much, much better in lower-cost labor markets than it is in high-cost labor markets.

1:02:58Is there an arbitrage there because your drivers are not essentially employees? Is there a labor cost arbitrage? Because they're gig workers, they run their own cars, they don't need to be paid benefits, insurance. Yeah, there's a trade-off there, right? Which is we can't tell our drivers when and when to work, right? So imagine if Starbucks is hiring a barista, they don't go to the barista, hey, show up whenever you want to, and we'll pay you however much as Starbucks barista mix per hour. So you could call it a labor arbitrage. I call it a trade-off, which is the driver and the courier can decide when and where they want to work.

1:03:39That creates cost for us. We then have to build liquidity of supply and demand. And sometimes we will use incentives and or algorithms. For example, surge are circumstances when demand exceeds supply. And in those cases, we have to actually raise prices for that demand in order to attract enough drivers to get out into the market to pick up everyone arriving at 7 p.m. on a Thursday night at the airport or when the Warriors game is done. Right. So it's not an arbitrage mechanism. It is a trade-off that also is an enormous benefit to certain people who don't want to work on a schedule, who want to work less than 40 hours a week.

1:04:42You know, 70 % of our drivers and couriers are working less than 20 hours a week. So it is a unique product market fit that we found. It works for drivers and couriers. It works for us. We have to build very complex systems in order to make it work. And I think overall, when you look at society, it's good for society, right? It's a service both for the drivers and for customers that works. And I think more and more societies are appreciating that. You've spoken about autonomous vehicles a bunch of times. And I don't know if it'll happen sooner or later than you predict. Everyone's been wrong so far.

1:05:26So who knows? Well, I mean, the predictions generally of autonomous and when it's going to be ready for market, this is a prom that Waymo has been working on probably for 15, 20 years. And it's proven out to be a much more difficult prompt solve than anyone expected. But finally, it's working now. I mean, the Waymo product is spectacular. And there are others building out the products as well. I was at a junction last evening, and there was a fire truck behind a Waymo. Interesting. And I didn't... With the sirens on? The sirens were on. And the Waymo actually did this interesting maneuver where it went right, stopped there, waited for the fire truck to go.

1:06:11It was incredible. Yeah, perfect. What do you think wins? Waymo's tech or Tesla's? Cameras, LiDAR, radar? I personally believe that autonomous vehicles have to have superhuman levels of safety. I don't think it's good enough for them to be better than humans. They have to be multiple times better than humans, and Waymo's certainly proven that that's possible. So why not take that shot? I think in the near term it's going to be very difficult, and Elon would tell me I'm wrong, and never bet against him. But it's my instinct that in the near term, it's going to be very difficult to build a camera-only product that has superhuman levels of safety.

1:06:55And again, now, at some point, will it be possible? Quite possibly, yes. But if you can have instrumentation that includes cameras and LiDAR, and the cost of LiDAR, you know, solid-state LiDAR now is$400,$500. Why not include LiDAR as well in order to achieve superhuman safety? So possible, yeah, it will be possible. I don't know when. But is the possible the better product? I'm not sure. I would, all of our partners that we're working with now are using a combination of camera, radar, and LiDAR. And, you know, I personally think that's the right solution. But I could be proven wrong. What happens to Uber's earners when, if autonomous becomes safer and cheaper, one could argue that putting a human behind a wheel is a disservice because you're putting somebody at risk.

1:07:59At that point, what happens to all the earners who are working with Uber? I think it's not just earners. It's then why should humans drive, right? Society would be, I think there are about a million auto-related fatalities in the world. so why not save those lives? I think that it's an inevitability for that to happen. So it's not just drivers, but also all the drivers, whether professional or not, wouldn't drive anymore. And I think that would be a good outcome for society. I do think we have time. How much then? Between, I think it's a good 20 years. Because right now, the drivers, the autonomous drivers, are safer but much more expensive.

1:08:43even in developed markets that have high labor costs. So for autonomous to come into India is going to take a long time in terms of cost of hardware coming down. So 20 years I'm describing as an end state. Within 10 years, you're going to see a significant number of autonomous vehicles, especially in developed markets. And I think that's a very good thing in terms of safety. And what we're trying to do is make sure we communicate with our drivers appropriately. And it's very, very small at this point. It's a teeny, teeny part of rides in any markets. And we're actively looking to create other work opportunities for those drivers as well.

1:09:26So for example, I'm actually going to go to a meeting later today of a new group that we built, Uber AI Solutions, that is using our gig workers and then other specialist workers as well for AI labeling, translation, all kinds of needs and products that actually serve these AI models, some of which may be autonomous or not, that ultimately are going to be doing a bunch more of the manual work, not just driving, but the manual work that many workers do today. I was having this debate with a friend of mine back in India, and they were like autonomous for India with the cows and dogs and carts and all of that.

1:10:11But when you think about it, if a computer has a reaction time which is faster than a human, an autonomous vehicle should do better with more arbitrary things like this at play. Totally. I think it's just a question of training. And if autonomous vehicles can figure out New York City traffic, you know, India traffic is harder. But it's only an issue of training on additional data sets and improving the capabilities there. Yeah, and I don't want to be unfair with this question of what happens in 20 years to earners, even if it takes 20 years, because I could extrapolate the same thing for so many industries where AI will disrupt their jobs in 20 years.

1:11:00Yeah, it's a societal issue. But what happens to society? what has happened to society repeatedly and repeatedly is that the workforce is adjusted over and over again right every single time when um more of manufacturing was automated there's always this drama of oh my god what happens to the people and people figure it out and people usually then go to higher uh value types of labor and you know unemployment rate we our world has more automation today than it ever has been, and unemployment rates are at historical lows in most developed countries. I think the question is whether or not this is a unique time and circumstance where the change is going to happen faster than it ever has before.

1:11:48And based on the rate of technological change there, there's reason to believe that, yeah, maybe this time may happen faster than societies historically have been able to adjust to change. I don't know that yet. I don't think it's a problem for Uber. It's a problem for, well, it is a potential issue for Uber, and it could be a real problem. But it's a big societal problem that we all have to take on. But there's also opportunity there. How can we educate our workforce and bring to them opportunities that ultimately allow them to live the kinds of life that they want to. Our, you know, kind of building Uber AI solutions is one small step in that direction.

1:12:36But believe me, we don't have all the answers. Do you suspect, Dara, that you might lose access to data like you have now? If tomorrow, say, Elon's saying that Tesla will not need Uber or even Waymo. I'm guessing a lot of the data is controlled by the hardware and less by who booked the Waymo. Well, I think that we actually now have, we're collecting data using LucidCars in a bunch of cities as well. So I think for Uber, data is not going to be a problem. And we will have data capture capabilities. We'll work with our partners to capture data as well and then provide them to our partners all over the world.

1:13:23And based on the growth that we see, our access to data is only going to increase. Right. Travis is doing ghost kitchens. Yes. I watched an interview of his where he was speaking about how this could change how we eat. Any view on that? Do you think that's going to happen? I think it's inevitable. I think it'll take time. You know, change in the real world really takes time. But I've been super impressed with what Travis has done with ghost kitchens and now he's working on robotics as well to automate more of the cooking process and bringing healthy, natural food to more people with less labor.

1:14:02That's really, really cool. And he's a terrific partner of ours. We work with Cloud Kitchens all over the world. They're a big partner. And Travis is an entrepreneur that you should not underestimate. Any view on what could happen to restaurants, Dara? Like, I know a bunch of them, large chains back home, who constantly complain about the 15 to 30 percent they end up paying delivery operators. And they talk about how it's unsustainable. Add to that, you have the data and you start dark kitchens or what Travis is doing. What happens to an old school restaurant business? Well, I think an old school restaurant business that can't adjust is going to suffer.

1:14:47They're going to lose share. And so I think it's the job of the old-school restaurant business to become a new-school restaurant business. How do they do that? Well, I think if you break down what restaurants do is there's a component which is food, right? Giving you great food that you enjoy. And there's another component which is hospitality. Right. Which is come to this restaurant and there's an environment that you might enjoy, etc. And there's the mood, there's the romance of a restaurant as well. I think that what you will, there are certain restaurants where the hospitality part of the offerings is not quite as, is not as significant, right?

1:15:36McDonald's is more about the food than it is about going sitting in McDonald's and enjoying the seating there. It is about the food and the brand. and affordable food available quickly to so many people, right? And so I do think that those depending on the kind of food that you're providing, if it's about the food, then you will have to make this transition to either drive-through or delivery because you're not adding much value in terms of hospitality. and in those kinds of circumstances what Cloud Kitchens offers you which is a more industrialized way of still providing really healthy food to someone and the hospitality there is, well, I want to eat at home.

1:16:21I love my home. That is essentially where that system is going to go and yes, will it take share from the classic restaurant business? It will, but it's also actually extending the share of restaurant eating or restaurant food as a percentage of overall food consumption. If you look at restaurant sales, restaurant sales are growing faster than grocery sales because these restaurants are providing a better product more affordably, more conveniently. And then I do think that there will be certain restaurants where that hospitality, the third place that Starbucks was so good at, and I think Brian Nichols is trying to bring in, the feel that part of it um is still i think going to sing you know the romance of going to restaurant and so i think that those two the utility and the romance are going to be separable and you as a restauranteur have to understand where you want to be because i think the middle is going to be a difficult place to to live but the restaurant industry is adjusting um just like every single industry has to adjust.

1:17:32You've got to change in order to keep up with the times. So, Dara, you talk about ads on Uber. Yes. And I have found this even with myself that when I'm searching for something today, I don't use Google anymore. I end up using Perplexity or OpenAI or someone like that. Sure. If I want to build a brand tomorrow and I want to market and nobody's landing on Google Ads, what happens to the world of ads? How does a brand get built? How do I get the word out that I've started this new t-shirt company? Well, I think that those surfaces for a brand to truly get built are there in terms of Instagram and TikTok and Facebook, right?

1:18:18So the Google ad world, the perplexity ad world, et cetera, are built for searches based on intent. and so I think that that medium is about growing brands, not establishing or inventing brands. But I actually think that the surface area for brand new brands to grow and thrive, it's actually greater than it ever has been. I'll tell you a little story of my niece. Liliana, she's incredible. She has studied humanities, loves fashion, loves golf, built a, wanted to build a new golf brand, which is like fun, great, you know, fashionable clothes for women. She went on, she used Mid Journey, taught herself how to use Mid Journey, designed all of the designs on Mid Journey, then went out and sourced her clothing with, I think it's some Chinese players and Indian players and I think a couple of other places, got the clothing and now she is building this Lilyhammer brand and using TikTok and using Instagram as her distribution mechanisms and also going to like these traditional golf clubs, etc.

1:19:45She could not have done that 10 years ago. So I actually think this is a magical time with the tools that you have at your arsenal and the manufacturing prowess all around the world at your disposal, it's a great time to build brands. And I think the surfaces are there as long as you have a story, you've got a personality, and you have something distinctive to add. You're saying social media is still the go-to place. Oh, yeah. Now, you know, would Liliana have the, you know, would she do well on Google? No. But that's not the surface. You know, that's a surface, let's say, for Lululemon, not her.

1:20:26With the current president's immigration policies, do you think labor cost for your earners will go up significantly? The cost of labor will not go up directly because I think the vast majority of drivers, couriers, et cetera, are illegal in terms of their immigration status. But to some extent, we compete with the labor market in terms of the rates that our drivers want to make per hour. So I think in an indirect way, it could have an effect on us, but I don't think it'll have a direct effect on us. Right. So, Dara, I have a fund back home in India, and I spent… You have a fund? I have a fund, yeah.

1:21:08Like a private equity fund. Sure. How's it doing? It's doing decent, I think. I spent a lot of the last couple of years buying into the transition into electric mobility. Interesting. So we got everything from electric scooters to trucks to buses. We even did an electric flying taxi investment recently. All over the world or in India specifically? A little bit all over the world, but more focused on that region. Have you seen Chinese electric vehicles, by the way? They're incredible, right? They are unbelievable. It is the innovation coming out of the Chinese OEM and EV business. I've never seen anything like it.

1:21:49It's extraordinary. Why, though? Why are they so far ahead of everyone else now? Because of the competition. I think there's this belief, I'd say, from the U.S. and a lot of Western countries that China is a planned economy. And China is a planned economy from a strategic standpoint. And for example, they want to get into manufacturing, EVs, etc. And so while that comes top-down from the government, then actually the way these industries grow is every Chinese significant city or province, et cetera, wants their own EV company to succeed. So in China now, there are over 100 OEMs in China, well over 100.

1:22:42And so then there's this bottoms-up competition that's based on the top-down strategy that the government sets. So you have kind of the best of both worlds, which is you have industrial policy, but then the winners aren't who's buddies with the president. The winners are who wins in a brutal competitive environment. So the winners coming out of China, the G-Lees of the world, the BYDs, you know, they have been through the ringer. And so it really is survival of fittest. And the innovation that we see and the speed of development there, it's extraordinary. In a free market, can anyone compete in ketchup?

1:23:25No tariffs, nothing, no duties. In a free market, can anyone catch up to China? Of course people can catch up. I think that, you know, when you look at the Korean manufacturers, there's a ton of talent there. But I think if you look at my expectation is overall share, especially in the EV sector, on a global basis of EVs is going to be, is going China's way for a while. But individual innovative OEMs, they're going to do fine. So say I'm a scooter company in India. I don't have the scale that Chinese manufacturers or OEMs have today. How do I compete? because they're building it 100 at scale that I am.

1:24:11I mean, listen, I don't know enough about the Indian industrial sector, but based on the innovation that I see out of India and the talent, there's got to be a way to compete.

1:24:28What I see out of India, it's very, very special. I think that, especially in IT industries, India really has risen. And I think manufacturing is still somewhat nascent relative to the size and potential of India. But there's no doubt we'll get there. I had this thesis that all vehicles will be electric by X amount of time. But the adoption seems to have slowed down. Why is that? Subsidies are going away. Yeah, subsidies are going away now. I do think that in Europe and China, it's definitely happening. I do think that it requires substantial investment over a long period of time in the infrastructure, charging infrastructure of cities.

1:25:21And so the societies that have continued to make way there, you are seeing the product, you're seeing EV penetration continue to improve. And within Uber, we are moving to EVs five times faster than the general public. So EVs inside of the Uber system are definitely increasing. And from my standpoint, I'm hoping that we continue to increase the penetration of EVs. And the next driver that you want, switching from a combustion engine to an EV, is actually Uber driver, because the average Uber driver is driving four to five times the mileage of the average driver. So we continue to push it. We're still quite committed to moving over to as much sustainable, both packaging for our restaurants and EVs.

1:26:13But I would say that it's gotten much harder over the past two years. So if I make the bet today by investing capital in the assumption that all vehicles will be EV. Do you think it's still a fair bet? Yes, it's a better technology, but it's a question of you might want to pick where you're investing. Give me some advice. Where should I? Well, China, no, there's too much competition, but I think that there's still potential in Europe. And I look at the investments going into the charging infrastructure of local cities. That's a signal that I would look for. Right. With everything you're building, Dara, Funnily enough, I had to tell you this.

1:26:51There is a really popular wrestler in India with the name Dara Singh. Really? Yes, I don't know if I should call you Dara because that's how we call it in India. Or Dara as people… Dara's right, yeah. Is he bigger than I am? I think so. I find that surprising. I've never met him, but I suspect he is. He's much bigger than me too. With everything you're building, Dara, is there a super app coming? Is that the eventual outcome? I think that super apps seem to be particularly relevant in Asia and China, etc. They've been quite successful there. They've had less success in Western markets. So I don't know if we will get to what you would call a super app, but we certainly want to be a connected family of apps.

1:27:44So if you go on Uber now, Uber Mobility, we have Uber Eats available to you, and people are transacting billions of dollars of Uber Eats on the Uber Mobility app. And on Eats, obviously, we have grocery, we have retail. You'll know next time you need a travel adapter. And so we have, I'd say, an ecosystem that is making it increasingly easier for you to work from surface to surface or with a membership plan, Uber One, that gives you discounts on both. So I absolutely know that we are building kind of this local ecosystem, that local OS of yours. whether the physical manifestation is a super app or not I don't know and kind of the way I view it is I'm going to let our engineers and our product folks kind of innovate, come up with the next idea and then we'll go kind of one step in front of the other to get to that outcome I was thinking about this and I did a little bit of research super apps tend to work in societies without as much rebellion as much what?

1:28:55rebellion in pseudo-socialist societies. In more capitalistic ones, everybody wants to bet on the new guy, the young guy. The same David Goliath argument. I think there might be some of that, but there's also phone storage and capabilities. Having a separate app for all these different services may be a lot. And I think in some of the more developed markets, people will pay for that last 10 or 20 % of fine-tuning that maybe a super app doesn't. So I don't know whether it's societal or it's a competition of society or technology coming together. It definitely hasn't worked in the West, though. Last question, Dara.

1:29:40You have been a successful investment banker, a two-time CEO, Expedia, Uber, sometimes joining Midway. and really scaling the company. If you were me, a 20-year-old boy or girl in India, and you had to start afresh, what would you build today and who would you build it with? Who would your co-founder be? So I always think people should know their own limits. I am not a startup person. That's not my skill. I'm a scale person. You know, I'm not the person to kind of start with an idea fresh. and I have enormous respect for those rebels who think that they can do it on their own. My advice would be, I've always said when I give career advice to people is I look for three things.

1:30:34One is I want to work for people who I like and I can learn from. Second is I want to go to a place where I as an individual can make a difference. and third, I want to make a difference at a place that matters in the world, is making a difference in the world. And actually, that's why investment banking for me, like, great people, I thought I was pretty good, but it wasn't, I didn't get that jazz. I wasn't changing the world. And so then when I saw Barry, I'm like, great, I want to work for him. And we were really on this path of the changing of the world and hopefully helped it with travel as well.

1:31:16And I was really, you know, I thought I was going to run Expedia for as long as Barry would help me. But then for me, Uber, the thing that really excited me was how important Uber was to the world. And, you know, the difference, hopefully, that I could make as a CEO. I think a lot of young people, they kind of think too much about, like, how much money they're going to make or this or that. It's like, work for people who you love or respect. Make a difference. and try to work at a place that's making a difference. And the rest takes care of itself. Thank you, Dara. This was a lot of fun. Thank you.

1:31:49And hopefully we do it again sometime soon. I think that'd be great. Thank you. Thank you.

1:32:00How did you hurt your hand? I was at camp with my kids. And my son, Hugo, is a keeper. and I used to be a keeper in high school as well. So I thought it was a good idea to play keeper against him and all the other camp counselors. And I got carried away and I dogged to make him proud. So I took this one for my boy.