Uber’s Product Chief Draws a Line: Travel Yes, ‘Everything App’ Not Yet

Uber has added hotel bookings, a "shop for me" concierge feature, and boat rentals in Europe over the past year, but Chief Product Officer Sachin Kansal told TechCrunch the company is deliberately not chasing the all-in-one model that defines Asian super-apps like Grab.

"We're not trying to be everything to everyone," Kansal said in an interview with TechCrunch, framing the recent additions instead around a single theme: travel.

That framing matters because it sets a boundary on how far Uber will extend beyond ride-hailing and delivery. According to Kansal, roughly 1.5 billion trips on the platform each year happen outside a user's home city, which the company reads as evidence that travel is a natural third pillar. "Travel really is, in my opinion, the third leg of the stool," he said, placing it alongside rides and Eats.

The Expedia deal, and a handoff model for everything else

Uber's headline product this year is hotel booking through a partnership with Expedia. Kansal said Uber built the entire interface itself and integrated Expedia deeply, a level of investment it does not extend to every new category.

The boat rental feature in Europe works differently: tapping the tab hands users off to a partner's own booking flow rather than completing the transaction inside Uber. Kansal described this as a deliberate approach for testing new categories, since a full two-way integration takes significant time. If a handed-off product gains traction, he said, Uber can integrate it more deeply later.

That two-track method, deep integration for proven demand and lightweight handoffs for experiments, is worth watching. It lets Uber expand the surface area of its app without committing engineering resources to categories that may not convert.

Financial services, but selectively

On payments and lending, Kansal drew similar limits. Uber already offers the Uber Pro card, a debit card that lets drivers and couriers receive their earnings, and is testing merchant-focused products in some markets. For consumers, the company relies on Uber credits tied to its membership program rather than standalone financial products. Members booking hotels earn 10% cash back, which for a $1,000 transaction means $100 in credit usable on rides and Eats.

Asked whether Uber would launch its own buy now, pay later product, Kansal was noncommittal, pointing to existing partnerships that already offer the service at checkout. "We want to make sure that the experts do what the experts do," he said.

AV Labs: partner, hedge, or both

The more strategically loaded move is AV Labs, a business unit Uber launched roughly six months ago. It operates a fleet of sensor-equipped vehicles separate from Uber's regular driver network, designed to collect large volumes of driving data.

Uber positions the unit as a way to deepen ties with autonomous vehicle partners, several of which it holds equity stakes in. But owning the data layer also gives Uber leverage and optionality against companies it competes with, Waymo among them. The tension is real: Uber routes rides to Waymo in some cities while competing against it in others.

That dynamic surfaced in Phoenix, the first city where Uber launched Waymo vehicles with about a dozen cars. Uber recently wound down that pilot, a decision Kansal said was mutual, while scaling to hundreds of Waymo cars in Austin and Atlanta. He called Waymo "an excellent partner" while acknowledging it is also a competitor in many markets.

Membership and the profitability question

Uber One, the company's membership product, now has 51 million members and accounts for roughly half of bookings, according to Kansal. He said the program increases usage frequency within a member's existing category and drives cross-selling, with mobility-only users starting to order delivery and delivery-only users beginning to take rides. On the delivery side, he said, two to three orders per month cover the membership fee.

Kansal also said Uber Eats has been independently profitable over the last several quarters, a notable claim given how difficult food delivery has been to run profitably across the industry. Uber did not provide segment figures in the interview to substantiate the profitability characterization.

On competition, Kansal named Lyft in the US, Didi and 99 in Latin America, and Bolt and Ola internationally, plus DoorDash and Delivery Hero in delivery. He said he spends little time thinking about rivals, focusing instead on whether Uber is delivering full value to users.

Why it matters

The interview suggests Uber sees the super-app label as a trap rather than a goal. By anchoring expansion to travel and outsourcing financial products to specialists, the company is betting it can broaden usage without diluting focus. AV Labs is the clearest sign that the harder strategic work is happening below the surface, where Uber is quietly building leverage over the autonomous vehicle partners it will depend on, and compete with, for years.