In a surprising turn of affairs, Uber's board of directors have now approached Dara Khosrowshahi to be the next CEO of the firm. If everything goes right, Khosrowshahi will occupy the post vacated by Uber's founder and erstwhile CEO Travis Kalanick back in June and hopefully put a plug on the series of public debacles that the firm has been attracting for some time now.
As per reports, the final contenders for the seat were Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman and General Electric chief Jeffrey Immelt. Khosrowshahi, who has been the CEO of Expedia since 2005, was not even a part of the short listed candidates earlier. While Whitman refused the offer saying that she wouldn't move to Uber, Immelt dropped out of the race due to some problem with the board of the ride-hailing service provider company, reported NewsBytes.
Since it's Uber we are talking about, even the process of choosing a successor of Kalanick was not devoid of drama. Reports claim that in these two months, Kalanick, who still maintains a seat on Uber's board, had been influencing the board to tilt things in his favour.
Expedia, where Dara Khosrowshahi comes from, is originally a part of InterActiveCorp (IAC). It was created out of IAC's travel vertical but was later given a separate entity and Khosrowshahi was given charge of the ship and there is no doubt that he has done a stellar job. Expedia grew from $15 billion in bookings to a whopping $72 billion last year. A feat, for which, he was paid handsomely by the conglomerate, as per The Verge.
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Since Expedia works with car rental and other transportation companies, Khosrowshahi is no stranger to the transportation industry and his expertise on these matters might just be the key to bring Uber back from its tumultuous fall recently. However, one should be clear that he has just been approached for the CEO position and there is no former declaration that he has accepted the challenge. Then again, industry insiders say it's just a matter of time.
It will be interesting to see how Khosrowshahi, if he does accept the role, plans on getting Uber's house in order. The recent antics of its erstwhile CEO Travis Kalanick, bundled with full-blown scandals and allegations, have made it something akin to a hornet's nest and spring cleaning is not going to be an easy task.
