Interview: Uber's Alon Lits and Justin Spratt

Loading player...
Thank you for listening to the TechCentral podcast. In this episode, Uber Technologies GM for sub-Saharan Africa Alon Lits and the company's head of business development for the same region, Justin Spratt, chat about the past, present and future of Uber in Africa. Listen as Lits explains how Uber got its start in South Africa, how it tackled its expansion across Africa south of the Sahara and what comes next. In the wide-ranging conversation, Spratt and Lits share insights into how the business has grown and some of the challenges it has faced along the way - not least the violence involving metered taxi drivers. The discussion talks about disruptive technologies - Spratt is not keen on the word "disruption" as he believes it has come to attract negative connotations - and how Uber is changing the way people live and travel. The discussion touches on subjects such as Uber's culture, working with regulators and the business opportunities still to come, including the potential impact of autonomous vehicles. It's a fascinating discussion. Don't miss it!
3 Oct 2017 English South Africa Technology · Business

Other recent episodes

TCS | Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha on beating Starlink to South Africa

Amazon’s Leo satellite constellation is coming to South Africa in 2027 through Herotel. TechCentral deputy editor Fanie van Rooyen speaks to Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha about Evry, the brand that will sell Amazon Leo to South African homes, and about how a company with no local licence walked into…
14 Aug 22 min

Meet the CIO | Derek Wilcocks on how AI personalised Vitality

Discovery group CIO Derek Wilcocks on personalised Vitality, the limits of AI coding and why growth beats cost-cutting. Derek Wilcocks, group CIO at Discovery, says AI has finally given the group the ability to do something it has wanted to do since Vitality launched more than 25 years ago: personalise…
13 Aug 50 min

TCS | Money just became native to the internet - Steven Boykey Sidley

Steven Boykey Sidley has been a chief technology officer at a Fortune 500 company, a private equity investor, a videogame designer, a jazz musician and, for the past four years, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg. He is a partner at Bridge Capital, heading its futures advisory,…
12 Aug 45 min

TCS+ | How AI is turning hardware into a subscription service

For most of business history, buying technology meant owning it. Capital was set aside, servers and laptops were hauled into the building alongside the software licences, and the business then sweated those assets for as long as it practically could. In the age of AI, that logic is starting to…
6 Aug 19 min

TCS+ | iStore Business on why Apple makes sense for SMEs

For small and medium enterprises, technology must do one thing above all else: get out of the way. Unlike large corporations with dedicated IT departments, SMEs run lean – and every hour spent wrestling with systems is an hour not spent on the business itself. In this episode of TechCentral’s…
30 Jul 37 min