Uber, Netflix, Careem, Airbnb and Facebook : A case of Shared and Gig Economy and their limitations.

A famous quote by an Entrepreneur is “Never do business with your own money, do business with someone else money”.  This quote has changed the case of doing business all around the world. In today’s era, we have been doing business like Banks. This concept is known as the Shared economy or Peer to Peer commerce or Gig economy, which have its roots embedded in Collaborative Consumption. A concept where companies do not own a single asset and do business with consumer’s assets.

Their business model was to capitalize those assets which are underutilized by consumers. Due to the advancement in technologies, everything is automated. World largest taxi fleet, Uber doesn’t own a single car. World’s largest subletting company Airbnb, doesn’t own a single real estate. World largest social media company Facebook doesn’t own a single content of its own.

What makes these above-mentioned companies expand themselves into a billion dollar corporations. The answer lies in Bad customer service. Amazon did not finish the book and retail industry; bad customer service did. World largest online watching portal Netflix did not kill the giant Blockbuster, worst customer dealing and service did. Uber and Careem did not kill taxi business, harassment, non-automated fairs, and bad customer service did. Spotify did not kill the music industry, non-customized and bad value music did. World largest accommodation company, Airbnb did not kill the hotel industry, upscale pricing and limited availability of rooms did.
People talk about blaming technology for closing down their industry. But it was not the technology or innovation, it was basically customer service and not being customer-centric.

The next step for these companies is global expansion. Uber in Spain provides food delivery in different parts of the cities. Airbnb will be focusing on creating their own hospitality chain and compete with Hilton and Marriott. Netflix is moving towards their own production business by the name of “Netflix originals”.

Yet, the shared economy is the fastest growing economy in the world but it has its own drawbacks and limitation. The most important drawback is breaking the law and regulations. Governments are putting a microscope on these issues. Since hotel industry gives a lot of taxes, but when you go for Airbnb, you don’t have to pay a single dime in terms of taxes. Secondly, in terms of Uber and Careem, their cars don’t meet safety standards plus the majority of the cars are not insured or their insurance is expired. Recently in Pakistan, few of the cases were highlighted were the Uber driver was shot dead or Careem driver sexually harassed a girl. Focusing on these issues should be the most important part of these shared economies.