From the heart of where innovation, money and power colli in Silicon Valley and beyond. This is Bloomberg Technology with Emily Jay. I'm Emily jan in Las Vegas for the retail event of the year, Shop Talk, where brands from around the world have gathered to talk about the future of commerce. I caught up with Uber CEO Dara Kazra Shah earlier to talk about everything from their vision to create a super app to Ukraine and inflation. Here's what he had to say. So, I understand this is your
first shop Talk, this is my first shop Talk. Welcome, thank you, Thank you very much. Um. A few years ago, you wouldn't expect the CEO of Uber to be at a conference talking about the future of retail. Many things have changed in a few years. Indeed, so why are you here. Why do you believe Uber is the future of retail? Well, I don't think that we're the future of retail, but we can certainly help drive the future of retail. If you step back on demand has completely
reshaped transportation, It's completely reshaped e commerce. You know, Amazon as kind of the the big player there and we are right in the middle of reshaping it. In terms of local commerce goes. It is happening right now, and we can be a force and essentially we can bring all of the fulfillment technology that we have on a local basis, pricing, matching, routing, etcetera, and use it to power our local merchant partners to essentially out Amazon Amazon
on a local basis. So the goal is to be sort of an anti Amazon, Like, if you can get it there in two hours, that's a lot faster than two hours, which what Amazon is doing now. Correct. I think Amazon had an unfair advantage and they built a national essentially fulfillment network, a vertical fulfillment network, and create an incredible business as a result of it. And I think now you're seeing technologies like Shopify come in, the stripes come in, etcetera. We are think of us essentially
as a local Shopify. We can help you power your local online commerce. And the Uber platform and the Uber audience is unrivaled in the world. So I think that not only can we use their technology to power local merchants, but we can bring to them an audience that no other player can. Shopify CEO Toby Luca told me, if Amazon is building an empire we're arming the rebels. How would you put it, We're arming the local rebels. So the question is how Amazon has has a huge advantage.
They've got all of these gistics centers. You are barely cracking the grocery market, which is, you know, a pick and pack operational model, which is different than just picking up food and dropping it off. So tell me about the how well. I think the how is, First of all, the local logistics UH has been built out right. The boxers are there, are grocery partners. Our retail partners have built out an incredible infrastructure that they've invested in over many,
many years. Our technology essentially allows that infrastructure to be tied into your local home. And for us, what's unique about us is that we're the only go get platform out of the world, and especially in a world that's opening up. Whether a consumer comes to your store and wants the shop in person, or whether that person wants to get that good delivered at home within an hour,
we're neutral. We can power both and essentially we can be that omni channel partner for the local merch gents UH, and we do well whether the consumer comes to you or whether we use our delivery network and the largest set of couriers drivers in the world to get it to your home. Again, we're neutral and we can power both use cases. Now, Cousin Greg from Succession tells me that Uber can gets me a lot of things these days, including things that I shouldn't eat. Um, I believe we
have a clip of cousin Greg. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. You can now get anything delivered with Uber eats. But take it from me, that doesn't mean you can eat anything. He gets. Burger that is a neat. Paper towels, don't eats. Bottle of vino, eats by drinking Nanna's eats every morning. Dog toy, don't eat unless you're a good boy. Toothpaste that's a stumper. This game just got really hard. It's yeah, it's a neat, but it's a don't swallows that's my favorite camp fancy
is that was that improvised or written? Did he just don't know? Apparently he's a very funny guy. Um, this is a big marketing campaign for you. I think if unless you've been living under a rock, you have seen one of these ads. How much did this campaign cost and is it paying off. Isn't driving people to the platform who didn't know about this whole don't eat things? Oh? Absolutely no. The awareness of Eats now not being not being just about food, but about being everything other than
food as well has increased substantially within our audience. And if you step back, you know we are that kind of call it the the local operating system for every everyday life as a consumer. Wherever you want to go, whatever you want to get, we can get it to you. And what we found is we're able to transition from being a mobility only company we were eight to the food game. Right, we were not one of the early
entrance in the food game. We now with Uber Eats are at a fifty billion dollar run rate and growth bookings were the biggest player in terms of food globally outside of China. And we're seeing the same kind of behavior, which is the Uber customer who said, oh you can take me someplace, Now you can give me my food. They're saying, oh, you can give me my groceries. Wow, you can get me dog food, etcetera. So we're seeing the behavior of our customers because of the frequency and
the habits that were forming with them. We've got their identity. We already have their payments information. We probably know where you live. We have more drivers and couriers than anyone else because they are driving a courier just from a functional, everyday easy standpoint. Consumers are coming to a platform and they keep uh deepening their relationship with US. Earners have many more opportunities to earn and as merchants, you now
have acts says to this incredible customer base. Whether you want to access it through the marketplace, whether you want to use our advertising platform, or if you just want to fulfillment platform, Hey give us local logistics, logistics and I want to sell through my own platform as well. We're completely flexible working anyway with merchants, and we take this very very seriously. So today you're announcing a new deal with BP, which gets you obviously BP of the
BP also a network of convenience stores. What does this get you, Well, this is our first global convenience partnership with BP. We started working with them on a local basis and growing from there. We essentially now work with them in five different countries and we're going to be wiring up over the next two to three years. Three thousand BP convenience locations, and this is all about getting anything you want within thirty minutes, which is proving out
to be a delightful experience. The the key in turn MS of that fast delightful experience is it gets you in the door for the appointment viewing. If you can get me ice cream, you know in fifteen minutes, you will have a much higher shot of than getting me the big basket shopping the appointment viewing, which is what corner Shop has done, and we're bringing onto the uberes platform. So could it get a deal for your drivers on gas?
That's a big question. Well, you've seen us now uh introduce a searcharge in the US, and there are various different approaches that we are taking internationally as well. Um. You know, we look at the cost of driving for our drivers or couriers who use our platform pretty seriously and we will look to offset those costs either through a pass through like the fuel searcharge, which goes a hundred percent to drivers and couriers, or through deals with merchants.
And you can bet that we're having discussions with PP as well. Okay, so that could happen. Of course it could happen, and I would say, it's not only in terms of fuel, but it's also thinking about electrification, how you know, the um recharging evs on a local basis as well as going to be an area. So we're having all of these discussions with many players around the globe. So let's talk about these gas prices seven dollars over seven dollars in southern California. How much higher are you
prepared for them to go? And how long do you think this is going to last? You can't know, one can predict the future, but I do think that we're certainly hoping that the worst of gas prices is behind us, and we will look to be a partner with drivers, with couriers, and with merchants, because in the end, it is in our interests for people to move around in the cities. While inflation is serious and real, we haven't had we haven't seen it have any kind of a
material effect on business. People are getting now tons of people here, people are ordering, it's, etcetera. So we've done our part in order to lessen the financial bite on our earners and we'll see where we go from there. Still, you've got drivers who say it's not enough. They were already struggling to make ends meet. This really hurts and this searcharges. I understand it goes through May eleventh. What happens after May eleventh? I think it depends. It depends
on where fuel prices are. Hopefully, if these terrible events in Ukraine resolve themselves, we will have some relief. But we're definitely gonna look at it, and if we don't see relief, then we'll determine how to go forward. It's in our interest for our earners to earn a good, flexible living that they're satisfied with. You know, you are also the CEO of Expedia in an earlier era. I mean, what is your assessment of the scale of Obviously we're
facing massive geopolitical uncertainty, a humanitarian cry. What's your assessment of the economic crisis that we're facing with inflation is at fourty year highs? Inflation is is uh real? And I think anyone who says that it is going to go away, I think it's kidding themselves. At this point, UM, we haven't seen any signs of inflation abating. You know, I think that it's first of all, it is in everyone's humanitarian interest to UM make this conflict, come to
an end, come to a peaceful end. I think if we are successful there and the early signal seems to be good, uh, then I think the set up for worldwide economic growth is actually really strong. Right. The reopening is a real Consumers are spending. They have been flushed with government essentially subsidies. We have to now replace those government subsidies with economic subsidies, and that means local economic activity.
The more people get out there, the more the aonomic subsidies kind of take over, so to speak, and we can grow the economy, not at the rates that we have let's say last year, but at rates above inflation. That's certainly the goal, and we can be a part of that. What kind of activity are you seeing? If you know we're not just facing gas prices, but inflation and ongoing pandemic. How is that impacting prices, rides, deliveries, and demand. So activity at this point is very robust,
that's it. At higher prices, but we're seeing and if you look at our commerce business, we're seeing essentially best months ever. Even in our mobility business continues to hit post pandemic records, and the same for a delivery business. So we are benefiting from a secular trend right, more people want more on demand local services and or transportation. So I think as an entity, we are benefiting from
secular tail winds and habits moving over to our platform. Uh. That probably maybe hiding some weakness, but within our business and within our ecosystem, we're not seeing any kind of weakness. Uh, And we think our merchant partners can benefit from that. Now, a lot of people don't may not realize that eats and rides are almost the same size, and they seem to be growing in tandem two point four versus two
point three billion dollars as of the fourth quarter. With this bet on retail, do you see eats and donat becoming bigger than rides? And how much bigger that is? Actually, that is absolutely the goal. So so four perspective. Our Uber ees business four years ago was that a forty was that a four billion dollar gross bookings run rate.
It's now at a fifty billion dollar plus gross bookings run rate, and only four years our retail business gross ring retail business, Corner Shop and our new verticals are at a four billion dollar run rate. So I've told my team four years from now, you better be a fifty otherwise the CEO is going to be very disappointed. Name of you. So that that business and the uber
the eats mainline food business continues to grow. But just for perspective, we added over a hundred and twenty thousand UH non food merchants in the US just this uh this last year. So as we add, what we see is as we get more merchants connected into our platform and the content is there, the ease of use of our platform from rides to food to now donates um takes over and consumers start to go back and forth throughout the platform. And is it bigger than rides? Ultimately?
I know these are your two children, but you're asking me to choose to my two children. Uh, they certainly have a chance of being bigger than rides. If you look at the total addressable market of food and local commerce, they are bigger than mobility. But it's going to be a great race and I win either way. UM, what are the unit economics of retail and how are they different from food and grocery? And what are you learning from all of these other you know, logistical initiatives that
you've had to this point. So generally, we're able to make the unit economics work more so than our competitors because the cost of customer acquisition for us is essentially zero because we have the largest global audience out there, and we already have built a logistics commerce ecosystem that's highly efficient against our competitors. So on the retail side, early on, our unit costs are or our unit profitability is going to be early on, Diminimus, We're not looking
to make money here. We're looking to partner up with our merchants and essentially get you our audience as quickly as possible and drive your logistics costs as low as possible. This then erode some of the profitability aggress that delivery has made. We are essentially the growth and the incremental profitability from our mobility and our heats business are more than enough to pay for the investments that we're making
in retail. Uh So, overall, what we talked about with investors is a target of five billion dollars and ebida in um within the scope of the growth right beyond that being significant, so we can invest and we can grow both top line and bottom line at the same time. So there still seem to be questions about the longer term sustainability of the delivery model. Uber shares are down, Door too, shares are down. Instat Cart just dropped its
valuation from billion dollars. Is there going to be consolidation here? And I know there are even many more competitors globally, but can all of these companies survive? I think there will be consolidation. I mean four perspective. There isn't a single mobility or deliver replayer outside of the US that's profitable. So a lot of them are making promises about being profitable, but they're not profitable. We are, on an Ibada basis profitable outside of the US and globally, both in mobility
and with a delivery business. So we have gone to that profitably. We have a scale in an audience that no one else has, and we made their early investments in globalizing. Unlike other companies. It's very expensive early onto to globalize. Uh. So there will be consolidation. Uh. And I think because of our size and scope, were you know, a few yards ahead of the competition at this point. Uber has rapid delivery exposure through go Puff. Can rapid
delivery for retail exist? And how might Uber get into it. Absolutely so. We are for example, partnering of with Carrefour in France to power rapid delivery. I think rapid delivery should be a part of every local grocery players offerings. UM it can be set up, we think, in a capital light way and we can essentially help our local partners power local delivery in a very very light way, and we can get that thirty minutes delivery time that is, you know, the delight meter up at a level that
matches competition. Absolutely, the delight meter. I like it. Um. Amazon has streamlined their logistics operation with the help of robotics, and I know that Uber walked away sold it's sold itself driving car business, but still has a stake very much. Do you see a role for robotics here for robotic delivery help? Absolutely so. Uh. We think that the first probably use case that you're going to see in scale
is going to be in trucking. Highway driving is a lot easier to solve than let's a city driving, and Aurora, whom we're partnered with, is very much focused on that kind of driving. And then you will see essentially that kind of automation find its way into other parts of the ecosystem. Same thing with grocery. Right now, automation makes sense uh in larger essential um warehouses and over perdo time, as it becomes more economical, you see automation make its
way into essentially every day. So what does that mean for drivers? What it means for drivers is that you're gonna have robot drivers and you're gonna have people drivers. And what you see with automation is that automation takes care of the simple, repeatable, low value tasks and humans can focus on the more complex, high value tasks as well. That will be true in our logistics ecosystem as well. There's this drama or the robot's going to replace people
over and over again. Robots augment people and we think that will be true and transportation, and it will be true in logistics as well. So here's a big question. It's still called Uber eats. It's if you're delivering stuff that you don't eat as well. Do we need a new name? It's working, but you know, we're going to think about it certainly that this actually the big air campaign was a big test, right is can the eats brand expand? And right now the signal that we're hearing
is a very very loud yes. So do you? I mean Uber eats and donates? Does that work? Uh? Uber eats and be careful don Maybe you'll have to ask cousin grab um. So give us as we close, give us the vision five years out, how will Uber be different five years out? Essentially, we are going to build
that local operating system for everyday life. Anywhere you want to go, whether you want to use an Uber or you want to use a taxi, or you want to use a bus, or you want to use subway, will get you the best way there, will identify the best way, make it absolutely smooth and delightful. Anything you want to get, whether it's food or groceries or pet food or makeup, essentially you will be able to get in your home
as well. And we will open up our technology so that our merchant partners can plug into that OS anyway they want. All right, we'll have to catch up again five years out of times before, hopefully Dara Kasra Shai, everyone, thank you