San Francisco, Aug 31 (IANS): Ride-hailing app Uber's new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi met the embattled start-up's employees for the first time and said the company needs to change to go to the next level.

"This company has to change. What got us here is not what's going to get us to the next level," the Uber Communications team posted on Twitter tagging the new CEO in the tweet.

Khosrowshahi said that he would assume his post from September 5, CNN reported.

It took Uber's board nearly 70 days to settle on a new CEO after the resignation of its co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick.

Kalanick was in attendance at the meeting. Khosrowshahi previously described his relationship with the brash founder as "budding".

According to Uber sources, Iranian-origin Khosrowshahi was not among those reported to have been in the running. The list included Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of General Electric (GE), and Meg Whitman, the head of Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

However, Whitman said in June that she would not move to Uber and Immelt pulled out of the race earlier on Sunday because of problems with the San Francisco-based company's board, the sources said.

Khosrowshahi took the helm of Expedia when it spun out of InterActiveCorp's (IAC) IAC Travel division in 2005. He previously served as IAC Travel's CEO as well as IAC's chief financial officer.

Uber has been without a chief financial officer since 2015 and the company's head of finance left the company at the end of May.

As Uber's new CEO, Khosrowshahi will face a big job, including repairing the company's internal culture, navigating legal battles and reducing its financial losses, CNN quoted the company sources as saying.

Last week, Uber said its sales reached $1.75 billion in the second quarter, up 17 per cent from the previous quarter.