On June 10, Uber, one of the world's largest mobile ride-hailing companies, announced that the publicly available application programming interface (API) for its third-party courier service UberRush has ended its testing period and will be open to all companies.
Service providers can directly integrate Uber's courier service into their relevant mobile applications, enabling Uber drivers to not only "carry passengers" but also "deliver goods". On September 25 last year, when a senior executive of Didi accepted an exclusive interview with Modern Logistics News (WeChat: cn156news), he stated that Didi does not rule out entering the courier and logistics markets in the future.
How does Uber Rush operate its crowdsourced courier service?
Uber's crowdsourced courier service: In April 2014, Uber officially launched its crowdsourced courier service Uber RUSH. Operating in Manhattan, New York, Uber Rush provides courier delivery services via couriers on foot or by bicycle, and can usually complete deliveries within one hour. The delivery fee ranges from 15 to 30 US dollars depending on the distance.
To put it simply, if you are within one of the five zones delineated by Uber, you can request a courier just like you request a ride through Uber. Uber's driver, referred to as a Messenger here, will come to pick up your item and deliver it to the location you specify.
Unlike Uber's previous services, Messengers are not vehicle drivers; they may ride bicycles or travel on foot. Users can check the estimated arrival time of the Messenger for pickup on Uber, and track the real-time location of their item at any time. As of October 2015, this service had covered three cities: New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.
How consumers send parcels via Uber: The specific usage is just like hailing a ride – open the Uber app, select UberRush, locate yourself or mark a pickup location, Uber will tell you how soon the Messenger will arrive to pick up the item, and then you can track the movement of your item on the Uber app.
However, Uber notes that since Messengers may travel on foot or by bicycle, the estimated arrival time is not always accurate; if a Messenger takes the subway and loses signal, it will also affect the estimated arrival time or the location tracking of the item.
Uber Rush delivers parcels and takeout, and also delivers...
New expansion of Uber's logistics business: On January 29, 2016, to further expand this service, Uber opened the API of UberRUSH to third-party merchants. This means the courier service has become standardized. External companies, especially service providers with their own apps, only need to use this interface to directly access Uber's courier service and achieve the goal of fast delivery of goods and commodities.
As a result, other retailers or external logistics companies only need to add a few lines of code to their own products to directly use the courier service of UberRUSH.
At present, many merchant apps have integrated Uber's courier service, such as the pizza delivery app Pythagoras, the on-demand dry cleaning service Dryv, the food delivery services Ando and Mealmade, and also including the on-demand drone rental service Up Sponder, among others.
Uber's ambition is to compete with Google and other companies: This move by Uber highlights its ambition. It not only hopes to dominate the people-mobility sector, but also intends to gain a foothold in the courier industry.
Many retailers in the United States use third-party courier services, such as Amazon's and Google's courier services, and now Uber has also joined the competition in this market.
Dare to compete for market share with courier giants such as FedEx
Competition with FedEx: According to Uber's CEO, Uber hopes that UberRush, along with its food ordering service UberEats, will become part of its plan to build an "urban logistics network" in covered urban areas. Uber also stated that this plan plans to recruit a team of more than 200,000 drivers to participate in intra-city parcel delivery services.
In this way, Uber can indeed grab part of the order volume from FedEx. But UberRush has launched a courier service that uses smartphones as the communication carrier, focusing on small, fast, same-day delivery services. And this only accounts for a small part of FedEx's business.
Uber courier drivers travel from Point A to Point B within the same city, and their service scope is limited to a small geographical area. It is mostly only suitable for delivering items such as flowers, Starbucks coffee, takeout, or a book from Amazon, and it is difficult to threaten FedEx, which has a huge logistics center and a radiation-style logistics network covering the country through rapid distribution centers.
Admittedly, the disruption brought by UberRush is unlikely to put traditional logistics giants out of business or cause any substantial impact in the short term, but its courier service is undoubtedly disruptive.
Comparison with China's domestic courier industry: At present, the development foundation of traditional domestic couriers in China is relatively solid, and SF Express and the Tongda network of express companies all have strong momentum. Since the trend of the sharing economy swept across the world, crowdsourced logistics businesses like Uber's courier business have already emerged rapidly.
Taking JD.com as an example, JD Crowdsourcing, with its strong backing, is an insurmountable obstacle on the path of Uber's courier business expansion. Although Uber, which takes the sharing economy model of ride-hailing as an entry point, intends to explore a broader range of service models and business segments, an idea that is in line with the development of the times, based on the current development situation of the courier industry, it still needs to make full use of its own advantages, formulate effective solutions to problems arising in the new business, break through bottlenecks and gain a foothold in the courier market.
Ye Yun, Director of Public Relations at Didi: Didi will enter the logistics sector in the future
Didi stated that it may enter the logistics sector in the future: On September 25, 2015, when Modern Logistics News interviewed Ye Yun, Director of Public Relations at Didi, he told the reporter of this newspaper, "It is hard for us to set an upper limit for ourselves. At present, we hope to fully cover various scenarios and various demands encountered in the travel sector. In the future, we do not rule out entering logistics, couriers, and even more services."