Uber Appoints Dara Khosrowshahi, as CEO. Lets know who is Dara Khosrowshahi

Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO. Photo: Recode
Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO. Photo: Recode

Dara Khosrowshahi spent the last decade as Expedia CEO, trying to stay one step ahead of the disruptors as Airbnb and others clawed at the company’s business. It wasn’t easy but it worked: Under his supervision and leadership, the travel company’s revenues increased 18% year over year, according to its most recent earnings results.

Now that Uber decides his name for Uber’s next CEO, he will get to play the other side and lead one of the most disruptive technologies in the last decade.

 

Investors are already cheering the choice — despite being labeled as a “truce” candidate in an internal board fight– because of what he stands for.

While Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick was protested vehemently for joining a Trump advisory committee, which he later removed himself from, Khosrowshahi has been outspoken about the current president.

Earlier this year, he told the Financial Times that “It is important to have safe borders, but at the same time we can’t forget what brought us here. This is an immigrant nation,”. Iranian-born Khosrowshahi moved to US with his parent at the age of four as a refugee during Iranian revolution and he is effected by many of President trump’s actions.

Khosrowshahi started his career in banking first. later he served at  Barry Diller’s firm IAC.

 
After joining Expedia as CEO in 2005, Khosrowshahi  had taken some tough and difficult steps in order to counter economic recessions that cut into people’s travel budgets and upstarts like Airbnb that have tried to take away its business.

As CEO of Uber, Khosrowshahi will be stepping into a minefield of battles, albeit many of them internal power struggles rather than global economic events.

Still, his selection amid a board power struggle between Kalanick and Benchmark Capital, one of Uber’s earliest and largest investors, signals that Khosrowshahi is ready to for a new fight.

He’ll have his hands full from day one with a large lawsuit looming over the future of Uber’s self-driving car program and a nearly-empty C-Suite that will require him to hire a new COO and CFO for the ride-hailing company.

Source: Forbes, Bloomberg