Nikesh Arora, who was up until recently the president of Japanese telecommunication giant Softbank, is now “quietly advancing” himself to become Uber’s next CEO.
This development was mooted in a New York Times article, where a source privy to the search committee working to fill the top vacancy at Uber dropped names like ex-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and current head of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki.
Uber’s co-founder Travis Kalanick resigned as CEO in June, with the cab-hailing firm deep in a spree of controversies amid sexual harassment complaints and a lawsuit over stealing trade secrets.
Much to Uber’s delight, the vacant CEO post has fetched quite a good response despite widespread negative perception of the company. Now, it’s up to a five member committee to pick the best of the lot.
Arora throwing his hat in the ring should hardly come as a surprise, with his previous experience in working for multinational giants.
Before he began a two-year stint at Softbank in 2014, Arora served as a senior sales executive at Google. He quit Softbank in 2016 because he wasn’t given the go-ahead to become the company’s next CEO. He was allegedly blamed for stitching up bad deals and creating conflict of interest within businesses, all this after earning around 500 crore annually.
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The challenges that awaits the incoming Uber CEO will comprise changing the brand perception and giving the company enough ammunition to succeed in emerging and growing markets like India, where they go head-to-head with Ola (which is funded by Softbank).
Earlier this week, Uber reportedly shifted its base from Russia, amid its growing loss-making culture, which they hope, with the new CEO, brings a change in fortune for the business as well.
Other than Arora and Mayer, Uber is also looking at are Adam Bain, Twitter’s former CEO and David Cush, ex-CEO, Virgin America among others.
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