Sidecar, an early player in the ride-hailing business, is suing Uber, claiming the billion-dollar business “stifled competition in the market for ride-hailing applications,” according to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. district court in San Francisco on Tuesday — first reported by Reuters.
The company, co-founded by Sunil Paul in 2011, alleges Uber “used a number of tactics that are against the law to drive Sidecar out of business,” per Paul’s blog post published this morning. Sidecar had raised a total of $43 million in venture capital backing and operated its service in 11 U.S. markets before it says it was forced to sell its assets to GM in 2016.
“We fought hard in the marketplace, and were the first company to introduce a number of cutting-edge features that are now a part of every ride-hailing app,” Paul writes. “If Uber had won the ride-hailing market on a level playing field, we would have been disappointed, but that’s something we could have lived with. That’s not what happened.”
Specifically, Paul alleges Uber used predatory pricing strategies, i.e., subsidized rides and driver payments in order to drive other ride-hailing startups out of the market, and “interfered with the performance and quality of competing ride-hailing apps by using clandestine campaigns to send fraudulent ride requests through competitors’ ride-hailing apps.”
Uber didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Here’s the full complaint:
Sidecar v. Uber by on Scribd
