Lyft has been scrapping with Uber for years for a bigger sliver of the car-share market, but its new CEO thinks that the challenges to the company go beyond just its longtime competitor.
The company’s founders have just stepped back from their executive roles, and David Risher, who was previously a senior vice president at Amazon and a general manager at Microsoft, has been given the top spot and the task to navigate the company through a period of economic uncertainty and immense competition.
“At some point, I don’t think of this as just an Uber battle,” Risher told MarketWatch on Monday. “It’s a battle against staying at home. How do we get people out? How do we get them playing and working together?”
COVID-19-linked restrictions and cautious behavior severely dented the ride-share business as more people were confined to their houses. Lyft reportedly lost 75% of its ridership in the 12 months between April 2019 and 2020, and Uber said its ride booking dropped by 75% between April and June 2020.
While Risher didn’t reveal his grand plan for prying people out of their homes, he did say that unlike Uber, Lyft would not enter the food delivery space. Uber launched its food delivery arm, UberEats, in 2014 and by March 2023 it had become the second largest meal delivery service in the U.S., according to Bloomberg Second Measure, a data analytics company.
“Our primary vehicle (ha!) will be rideshare. And we’re going to focus on making sure our riders and drivers have an incredible experience every time they interact with us, so they use us again and again to get out into the world,” Richer said in a statement Monday.
When asked for a comment, Lyft pointed Fortune to Risher’s letter from Monday and a statement from the company announcing the new leadership.
