Lyft is coming for company journey

As Lyft tries to climb out of Uber’s shadow, the ride-share firm goes after the high-end journey market.

CEO David Risher mentioned he’s already talking with CEOs like United Airlines’ Scott Kirby about bundling Lyft with different company journey perks. “Maybe it looks like: get a first-class seat, and get an automatic upgrade on Lyft to a TBR chauffeur,” he mentioned, referencing the European chauffeur service Lyft bought for $110 million final 12 months.

“Frankly, without an asset like TBR, you can’t even get to that table,” Risher mentioned.

After clawing its approach again into the black from $2 billion in annual losses three years in the past, Risher is aware of there’s solely so lengthy Lyft can compete on value. And whereas Risher — like Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi — expects the rise of autonomous autos to alter the calculus for his enterprise, he believes his higher-end clientele will nonetheless need to be pushed round by people.

“Our M&A supports what I’d call an ‘up and out’ strategy,” Risher advised Semafor in a latest interview in New York. “The ‘out’ strategy is geographic expansion. The ‘up’ strategy is about appealing to a higher-end customer, [opening] up a part of the market that’s been largely closed to us.”

Conquering the company market is a logical place to start out, Risher says. Hotels and airways already compete fiercely for enterprise journey {dollars}, providing favorable pricing at scale and even (comparatively) secret loyalty tiers for key company executives. Since Lyft already works with lots of the airways and motels, Risher sees a pure approach to deepen these partnerships.