"After 8.5 unforgettable years at @Uber and more than a half-dozen funding rounds, I've decided to put the shoe on the other foot...," Holt, Uber's head of New Mobility, tweeted https://twitter.com/RachelJHolt/status/1217121725772595200 on Tuesday.

Holt also tweeted she was working on co-founding a new venture capital firm in Washington D.C.

Her departure comes at a time when technology companies are revisiting their investments in shared transportation.

German car-makers BMW AG and Daimler AG in December said they will exit the North American car-sharing market, citing the "volatile state of the global mobility landscape."

Electric scooter company Lime, a San Francisco-based competitor of Uber's JUMP programme, last week said it was laying off 14% of its workforce and ceasing operations in 12 markets as it seeks to become profitable.

Fuelled by venture capital funding, while electric scooter companies have flooded U.S. streets with app-based scooter rentals over the past years, none has yet turned a profit.Uber in November reported $38 million in third-quarter revenue from a non-core ride-hailing segment it calls "Other Bets," the largest portion of which includes its dockless e-bikes and e-scooters.

(Reporting by Akanksha Rana in Bengaluru and Tina Bellon in New York; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)