Jose Pinto

Uber is diversifying its portfolio of offerings in Mexico by focusing on tailored services such as Uber for Business, employee transportation, and more sustainable options.

What steps is Uber taking to diversify its portfolio of offerings in Mexico?

This is a global company, so decisions that are made in the headquarters have to be replicated everywhere. Our CEO joined in 2017 and enacted changes in terms of how we conduct business. Since the pandemic, investors now want short-term returns on investment. Now, the priority is still growth but profitable growth. We started with a positive cashflow, then a positive adjusted EBITDA. Subsequently, the goal is to continue growing 20% YoY as we are doing currently, but with a large profitability margin and a more positive bottom line. That is the global company guideline: we have to be profitable. What differs from country to country is what we provide. Uber for Business is one of the growth bets, for example, and we plan to grow faster than the rest of the business with that. However, Uber for Business’ offerings in Mexico are different from that in the US or Europe, because the economy, public transportation, the legislation, and all are different. In Mexico, we are more focused on providing more low-cost, affordable options. We have high-capacity vehicles that are available in Mexico, Brazil, Egypt, and India and somewhat in the US. This allows companies to book a bus to ferry their employees to their plant, for example. We also have other divisions such as Uber Central, which allows one to order up to 2,000 trips per hour, so they can book trips for their clients and so on. Such business is more suited to Mexico. Even though we are the same company globally, we have to adapt the products and how we use them to each market.

What are the biggest challenges facing Uber Mexico in terms of growth?

We have several challenges—some are because we are in Mexico, while others are because the pandemic has transformed many areas. Zoom is our biggest competitor, because it means people do not commute as much. We are not specifically pushing for people and companies to return to the office; however, if they want to, we offer a great solution for companies to convince employees to return. We offer extremely comfortable services, with buses that have Wi-FI and more. We partner with our clients to understand their goals and culture and then support them with their efforts. There are also new trends; for example, many younger people do not want to own a car and instead prefer Uber credits. This part of our business is not as big as we would like it to be though it is growing. If a company is leaning toward being more sustainable, we have Uber Planet. In Mexico City, we have Uber Green and Uber Black where users can see on their dashboards how much CO2 they are saving or producing per trip and how many sustainable trips they are taking. Uber Green is the most sustainable option because it only uses green vehicles, though in Mexico City we also have Uber Black. For Uber Planet, a percentage of the fare goes to one of our partners that invests in offsetting carbon.

What is your next step in Mexico?

There is a great deal of talk about nearshoring and investment coming into Mexico. The majority focuses on building plants and production infrastructure, though we are more interested in high-capacity vehicles to move people in and out of these sites. There is potential for us here to keep growing and faster than regular Uber. We also have Uber Freight in Mexico to transport items via trailers. With Uber Freight, we also have optimization software that we can sell to program better routes. We can do international shipping from the US to the Mexican border and are working on launching the next part, which is making the delivery from the border to the final destination in Mexico.