Stakeholders involved in Uber/Careem services

Stakeholder is an entity that shows an interest in a business or company and directly or indirectly can influence that particular company. It goes other way true as well. A stakeholder might be the one who is influenced directly or directly by a company or business. Typical stakeholders are investors, employees, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, or trade associations. Stakeholders can be categorized in different ways. Following are some major categories of stakeholders:

·         Primary and Secondary Stakeholders:  Primary stakeholders are the one who are directly affected by the outcome of a project. That’s why they are the most concerned about the success of project. On the other hand, secondary stakeholders play their part in building and development of the project but their role and impact is comparatively limited. For example, in a goods manufacturing factory, the owner is the primary stakeholder and the labor is the secondary stakeholder.

·         Internal and External Stakeholders: Project manager and other staff are considered as internal stakeholders because they are directly involved in developing the project. They have authority to manage the project by handling responsibility of work performance. External stakeholders include vendors, suppliers, competitors etc.

·          Direct and Indirect Stakeholders: Direct stakeholders are the one who are influenced by day to day activities. This might includes the staff or labor force you have applied for the project. Indirect stakeholders are the one who are interested only in final product i-e end users and customers.

                               

                                                Now we have our pre-requirements done, we can easily dive into our main task which is to elaborate the stakeholders of a ride booking application. Following is the list of possible stakeholders with brief description:

 

1.     Project Team: The team which has planned and implemented whole business idea is one of the main stakeholders. This includes the manager, staff, and captains.

2.      Competitors: Both Uber and Careem are business competitors and get influenced directly by each other. For example, if Uber has relatively low fares, people who use Careem normally, would have switched to uber. So change in operating activity of one entity is directly affecting the other.

3.      End User: The end user or customer is one of the important stakeholders as the whole idea and its success relies upon user experience. If the user is not satisfied by the services, the project might have not progressed.

4.      Software Companies: Software development companies and digital business ideas go hands-in hands. User’s satisfaction is directly depends upon interface of the application. If user is unhappy about functionalities of application, he may quit using the services.

5.     Advertising Agencies: Advertisement and marketing are necessary for the brand recognition. For this purpose, you have to purchase services from advertisement agencies. They put your offer with brand name in a presentable way and display it to the targeting audience through different medium. Brand’s success is very much dependent on successful marketing.

6.     Advertising Channels: For advertisement, a medium is required. This may include social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube Gmail etc. Careem also used billboards to display their offers.

7.     Conventional Drivers: Since the success of online ride booking, there is a significant decline in booking vehicles through conventional method. As a result, those drivers whose vehicles are not registered to Uber or Careem have suffered a lot.

8.      Partner Brands: Recently, Careem has introduced food delivery service. Many food brands have registered their food delivery through Careem. If those brands are putting attractive offers, then their customers are using Careem services to get their food delivered. In this way, both the entities are directly affecting each other.

              Uber Buying Careem:-

           Social and environmental factors play an important part in establishment of a brand in a particular geographical region. In the recent past, Careem had to sell a big portion of their shares to Uber just because they ignored these factors. What actually happened was that Careem displayed a controversial advertisement which was against the custom and norms of the society. As a result, they had to suffer a huge loss in their well-established business.

                          To summarize, stakeholders play a vital role among them and have great impact. Therefore, it is necessary to identify and understand all the possible stakeholders and make the strategies and policies accordingly.