Uber Launches Its First International Efforts In Paris

Alexia Tsotsis

Alexia Tsotsis is the co-editor of TechCrunch. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles in... → Learn More

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Uber, the private car share service that allows you to summon town cars via an iPhone, has opened up shop in Paris in time for international Internet conference LeWeb. Adding context to the jumpy video of the very first Parisian Uber ride above, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who was on my flight from SFO, tells me that there are a few Uber-enabled cars in the city of Light currently, and tomorrow that number will start steadily increasing.

I’m still waiting for confirmation of pricing and other details (I’ll update this post as soon as I know). Sure there are already many options for those seeking taxi service within Paris, but Uber, with its appeal to the tech-savvy and fashionable, has a good chance of gaining a foothold in the class-conscious international capital.

“This is going to end the monopoly of the taxis in Paris,” said LeWeb founder Loic LeMeur,”You will have models here, not like Geeks in San Francisco.” In an effort to preserve today’s Uber supply for customers, Kalanick took a regular taxi from Charles De Gaulle airport.

You can find Uber in the App Store here.


Company: uber platform
Website: uber.com
Launch Date: June 1, 2006
Funding: $7.6M

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