Despite laying off about 400 workers in a bid to cut cost last month (July), findings show that Uber has been spending more than $200,000 (N73 million) on balloons alone every year.
It was gathered that the popular ride-hailing platform purchases balloons for all employees in its San Francisco office to celebrate their anniversary every year. The company’s Chief Financial Officer, Nelson Chai, said the balloons cost $200,000 (N73 million).
Revealing how Uber is approaching this, Chai said that henceforth, the firm would now give employees stickers for their work anniversary instead of buying balloons in order to cut costs.
Uber had earlier announced the internal scheme called FindTheMoney which is a cost-cutting initiative deployed by the company to improve its margins.
The scheme was brought up after the company revealed that it lost N1.9 trillion ($5.2 billion) in the three months to the end of June, largely due to a N1.4 trillion ($3.9 billion) charge in stock-based compensation to staff.
The initiative also called out employees to dig deep and find out ways in which the company can scale up, thereby contributing their own ideas to the company.
READ ALSO: Uber Hires Google Executives As VP Of Global Marketing
The Chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi has defended the company’s finances amidst the current loss of revenue. He said, “We’re very confident that this company, at maturity, can be cash-flow positive. We can scale expenses and get really efficient with our marketing and incentives spend.”
Also reacting to the layoff of employees, Khosrowshahi said that the company’s teams were too big. This, according to him, created overlapping in the work, unclear decision-making, and could ultimately lead to mediocre results.
Samson Oyedeyi
