Yandex.Taxi is merging with Uber: through the Yandex application it will be possible to call Uber in Bangkok and London and partially vice versa. Uber and Yandex.Taxi are merging

Uber and Yandex announced the closing of a deal to merge taxi call services. As a result, the association will be managed by the head of Yandex.Taxi, Tigran Khudaverdyan. The board of directors of the resulting company is headed by three representatives from Uber and four from Yandex. The company announced this idea in advance - back in July 2017. The services have merged in Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Belarus.

Managers promise that travel prices will remain the same. As before, there will be two applications, but now they will have common drivers and taxi companies. Along with taxis, the joint company will also engage in food delivery. Yandex.Taxi has established a subsidiary company, Yandex.Eda, which will include the recently acquired Foodfox and UberEATS services.

We quote the official statement: “At the time of closing of the transaction, Uber and Yandex invested respectively 225 million and 100 million US dollars in the new company. With these investments, the company has $400 million in cash on its balance sheet. Thus, it is valued at more than US$3.8 billion. About 59.3% of the company is owned by Yandex, 36.9% by Uber, and 3.8% by employees."

Uber and responsibility

It is also curious that Uber sent letters to all customers by email about changes in the provision of their services, in which, in fact, it abdicated all responsibility for carriers. “You acknowledge that Uber does not provide transportation or logistics services or operate as a transportation company and that such services are provided by third parties.<…>Uber does not guarantee the quality, suitability, safety or capabilities of third party providers. You agree to bear all risks associated with the use of the services solely and to the maximum extent permitted by law. The Company shall not be liable for indirect, incidental, incidental, special, punitive or consequential damages, including lost profits, lost data, personal injury or property damage, in connection with the services, even if the Company has been advised of the possibility of such damages.”

Well, that's news! Just read - in just over three months there were three significant events:

1. At the beginning of May, the Vezet, RuTaxi and Saturn/Red-Taxi services merged, creating (at that time) the largest taxi aggregator in Russia (RuTaxi and Fasten companies). In light of today's events, it is obvious that the guys did not decide to work together out of a good life. Most likely, it was already known that Yandex-Taxi and UBER were negotiating.
2. Just recently, the head of UBER left his post. Travis Kalanick turned a small startup into a large business that is worth more than Rosneft, without owning a single taxi car.
3. Today it became known about the merger of UBER (Uber) and Yandex-taxi. The point is that the companies will retain their brands, but in a number of countries they will combine their technical platforms (Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan).

Now let's try to dig deeper and understand what happened in the market. In one word it is called CONSOLIDATION. There are fewer small independent players - even in Izhevsk the local “Saturn” (which is either “373”, or “930-373”, or is part of the “Saturn” group, or simply worked under its name) sold itself to those who came to the city Gett. By the way, Yandex-taxi entered Izhevsk on its own (on the second try) and began working with several taxi companies. I talked about these events (and how I screwed up with my forecast regarding Ya-T in Izhevsk) here:

Now there are even fewer independent players: Maxim, united RuTaxi/Saturn, Gett and Yandex/Uber. Theoretically, there are also small aggregators such as Taxi-OnLine, but now it is difficult to assess their prospects. As I said in the last issue of the book “Taxi as a Business”, the destiny of small aggregators is towns, villages and tiny settlements where the “taxi” civilization has not yet reached.

On the one hand, the unification of major players makes it possible to invest substantial funds in business development. With every news about a merger, it is especially noted that the merged companies agreed to invest 100-200-250 million dollars (for a second - 15 billion rubles) in business development. And all this money will go to: programmers, marketers/owners of advertising media and drivers (subsidies). So our brother should rejoice: while the taxi giants will clash heads, drivers will receive subsidies for trips. Thank you, Mr. Travis, for putting this evil practice into practice!

On the other hand, for the client, merging services is rather a minus - the fewer players, the lower the competition. And the higher the prices. It's no secret that the situation with prices in recent years has been simply appalling. If it were not for the increasing coefficients of a number of services, then drivers would give rides to clients almost at cost (rent, refueling, depreciation). One picture is worth a thousand words:

Gasoline has risen, prices for cars have generally gone into space - remember, a few years ago, when the Hyundai Solaris entered the market, there was an advertisement about the basic configuration for 299,999 rubles. And now start from 700 and above! At the same time, the price of a trip has inevitably fallen over the years, especially in Moscow: in 2013, you could get away from any metro within a couple of kilometers with a bomb in an old “ten” for 300 rubles. Now the client calls a new, covered Kia Sid with checkers and permits, drives with air conditioning and pays 170 rubles! It seems that with a decrease in the number of independent players, taxi prices will still rise. Who will benefit from this? Of course, our brother: driver and renter! The first one's income will increase, the second one will have fewer problems with obtaining a lease and returning a car.

So, for our market, such a merger is very good. Now a few words about the market itself - who places how many orders per day:

Yandex Taxi - 500,000

UBER – 150,000 – 170,000

Gett - 150,000 We all know that time is money, so if you need to squeeze out useful information on a topic and don’t have time to read the entire site, I recommend purchasing the book « » .
The book contains and systematizes all the information on how to make money by renting out a car as a taxi, driving your own taxi, or creating a dispatch office. Only experience and practice, no water.

MOSCOW, July 13. /Corr. TASS Anna Dementieva, Anna Toporova, Ekaterina Kazachenko/. The international technology company Uber and the Russian IT giant Yandex, which owns the Yandex.Taxi service, announced the largest deal in the online aggregation market - the creation of a joint company. Experts interviewed by TASS explained how the merger will affect the Russian taxi market.

For Uber, which is represented in 76 countries around the world, this is the first such association with a local player, Irina Gushchina, the company’s communications director in Russia and the CIS, told TASS. However, she emphasized that this deal should not be compared with Didi’s acquisition of Uber’s business in China. There, Uber's share was only 17.5% without the right to manage the business.

“This is the first time that we are merging a business in a country, and we continue to jointly manage this business and grow it. This is such a first example,” Gushchina said about the merger with Yandex.

The deal to create a new company has already been approved by the boards of directors of Uber and Yandex. It is expected that it will be closed in the fourth quarter of 2017. Uber will invest $225 million in the joint venture, Yandex - $100 million. The total value of the company is estimated at $3.725 billion. It is expected that at the time of closing the transaction, 59.3% of the company will belong to Yandex", 36.6% - Uber, and 4.1% - employees. In addition, Yandex does not rule out an initial public offering (IPO) of the new company.

“Indeed, the situation around the merger of the two largest taxi aggregators operating in Russia looks like “suddenly,” but if you take a closer look at it and evaluate the benefits that both brands acquire as a result of the merger, the question arises, “why didn’t these guys do it yesterday? “,” Sergei Plugotarenko, director of the Russian Association of Electronic Communications, commented on the deal.

Will the deal create a “new monster”?

The head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) Igor Artemyev has already stated that the deal could create threats to competition in the market of online taxi aggregators.

“We should not be afraid of the emergence of a new “monster”; it will not absorb the entire direction, on the contrary, it will give impetus to its development and the final, irrevocable digitalization of this direction,” Plugotarenko disagreed with him.

Taxi Maxim, one of the largest regional players in Russia, is confident that there is no monopoly on the taxi market, competition will continue, just with fewer large brands. “We must not forget that there are dozens of taxi companies operating in every city, among which there are those who occupy very strong positions. They are also competitors,” the company emphasized.

Nevertheless, the general director of the Moscow “New Transport Company” (brand “New Yellow Taxi”), Felix Margaryan, noted that after the transaction, such a large player in the taxi market in Moscow has no competitors left. “Moreover, this is the foundation for expansion into the international market. Thanks to the merger with a foreign company, Yandex.Taxi receives databases and a machine park abroad, and Uber receives cars and orders in vast Russia,” he emphasized.

Market share

Yandex and Uber will combine online transportation businesses in Russia and five other countries - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Players estimate the share of the joint company in the Russian passenger transportation market in the cities of presence at 5-6%. According to VTB Capital Research, the legal taxi market in 2016 was estimated at 501 billion rubles, and the “gray” market - 116 billion rubles. in 2015

Uber also estimated the share of the company merged with Yandex.Taxi in the Russian market at 5-6%.

As a result of the merger, the new company will become the second largest online ordering company in Russia after Fasten, which consolidated two leading taxi ordering services - Saturn and Rutaxi - in 2017. Among the most famous brands of Fasten are: Taxi Saturn, RedTaxi, Vezet, Rutaxi, Leader, Fasten.

At the same time, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the new company Uber and Yandex will dominate the aggregator market, believes Alexander Kostikov, director of corporate relations at Fasten. He emphasized that the deal between Yandex and Uber confirms the trend towards unification in the market.

The monthly volume of transportation of the merged company will average about 35 million trips per month, said the current CEO of Yandex.Taxi Tigran Khudaverdyan, who will head the joint project with Uber. As of June, the total monthly cost of Yandex.Taxi trips with Uber is 7.9 billion rubles, Khudaverdyan added.

What will Yandex and Uber gain?

Yandex said that the new company will use Yandex's technology and knowledge in the field of mapping and navigation services and search engines, as well as Uber's global experience in the market of online services for ordering transportation, which "will create an even more dynamically developing and sustainable a business that meets all the needs of users and drivers, and also helps develop the transport infrastructure of cities and regions."

The Yandex.Taxi and Uber applications will remain separate for users after the deal is closed. At the same time, taxi companies and drivers will switch to a single technology platform. Such a solution should make it possible to increase the number of cars available for fulfilling orders, reduce the delivery time, reduce idle mileage, and increase the reliability and availability of the service as a whole, the company believes.

This agreement once again proves that Russian technologies can not only perform on an equal footing with world leaders, but also surpass them in quality, says Bogdan Konoshenko, Chairman of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the Development of Taxi Transportation. “The fact that the terms of the deal included a roaming agreement on the possibility of ordering Uber cars from the Yandex.Taxi application around the world shows that the company was able to build a competitive and effective technology platform for which they are willing to pay dearly,” he emphasized.

Nothing will change for customers

Uber stated that it is not going to change its tariff policy after the closing of the deal to merge its business with Yandex.Taxi. Moreover, the companies plan that both taxi ordering applications will continue to operate.

“We do not expect any radical changes in tariffs related to the merger - neither now nor in the future,” Yandex promised not to change its principles.

As a source in the transportation market told TASS on condition of anonymity, the main advantage of creating a new company is the consolidation of budgets, which will allow intensifying promotion. As for tariffs, the agency's interlocutor suggests that initially we can expect them to decrease, thus, the merged company will try to attract those consumers who have not yet used any of the services. “Due to the combined budget, they could make a cheaper tariff, but at the same time not cut off payments for drivers,” he believes.

At the same time, the agency’s interlocutor does not rule out that in the future, when the company seriously increases its market share, it will be able to dictate its terms and then increase the tariff.

“We can only hope that tariffs for end users will not increase, because the competition between the two giants in this market forced them to “fight” for passengers, including through low tariffs,” Plugotarenko noted, in turn.

Bogdan Konoshenko, Chairman of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the development of taxi transportation, believes that after the merger there is no need to expect changes in the tariff policy. “In such a highly liquid market as taxi transportation, any tightening of the screws immediately leads to drivers and passengers switching to competitors. I think they will continue to move with the market and carefully develop services so as not to scare off users and maintain their partner base,” he emphasized He.

Relations with authorities

Russian Uber has repeatedly had problems with the authorities. For example, in early July, Deputy Mayor of Moscow Maxim Liksutov reported that Uber had not started transmitting data about drivers’ work online, as required by the corresponding decree of the Moscow government, which came into force in April of this year. “Uber transmits data to us, but not in the format we need. This does not allow us to respond quickly in emergency situations,” he said.

An Uber representative, in turn, noted that the company provides a significant amount of data under a bilateral agreement with the Moscow government. She added that it was too early to discuss specific aspects of working with the authorities, but assured that the deal with Yandex was not related to the requirements of regulatory authorities or the government. “The rationale behind this deal is purely economic efficiency and great opportunities for business development,” she emphasized.

Taxi fleet owners are also unhappy with the emergence of online aggregators on the market. Taxi drivers have repeatedly appealed to the authorities with a request to check the aggregators for setting tariffs below market rates. In their opinion, legal taxi drivers cannot provide transportation at such low rates. Carriers also complain that they have to operate at a loss.

Yandex.Taxi and Uber announced the closing of a business combination deal in Russia and several CIS countries. Compared to previously announced plans, the valuation of the new company has increased by more than $75 million.

Photo: Natalya Seliverstova / RIA Novosti

As stated in a message from Yandex received by RBC, Yandex.Taxi and Uber have closed a deal to merge the companies’ businesses in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

In the merged company, Yandex received 59.3% of the shares, Uber - 36.9%, and employees of the new structure - 3.8%. Uber invested $225 million in the new company, Yandex — $100 million.

Tigran Khudaverdyan, who previously headed Yandex.Taxi, became the general director of the new company. The board of directors included four representatives from Yandex and three from Uber.

The companies agreed to merge business in several CIS countries in July 2017. Initially, it was assumed that the distribution of shares in the company would be slightly different: 59.3% of the new structure would belong to Yandex, 36.6% to Uber, 4.1% to its employees. It was assumed that as a result of the transaction, Yandex would receive a small stake in Uber's global business. At the end of November 2017, the deal was concluded by the Federal Antimonopoly Service.

Initially, the value of the combined company was estimated at $3.725 billion. The Yandex message indicated that this figure is now “estimated at more than $3.8 billion.” As a Yandex representative explained, the new estimate was formed “taking into account the cash that the merged company will be able to manage.” Upon completion of the transaction, its accounts will have more than $400 million.

As representatives of the companies previously explained, after the transaction, both of their applications will continue to exist. However, the merger should improve the quality of services of both companies. As their representatives explained, a single technological platform will be created for taxi companies and drivers, which should increase the number of cars available for fulfilling orders, reduce the delivery time, reduce idle mileage, and increase the reliability and availability of the service as a whole.

The combined company of Yandex.Taxi and Uber will be engaged not only in the transportation of passengers, but also in the delivery of food from restaurants - the UberEATS service was included in the deal. In addition, in December 2017, Yandex.Taxi closed a deal to purchase the food delivery service Foodfox. According to RBC, the purchase of Foodfox cost Yandex.Taxi approximately 500 million rubles.

According to the analytical center under the Russian government, the volume of the taxi market in Russia has increased by 14.2% annually over the past couple of years and at the end of 2017 amounted to 575 billion rubles. The authors of the study call the Vezet group of companies the largest market player with a share of 12.3% - it was created by combining taxi ordering services Fasten Russia (operating under the Saturn and RedTaxi brands) and Vezet (RuTaxi, Leader brands, "Lucky") The total share of Yandex.Taxi and Uber at the end of the year was 10.4% of the market, which means that their combined structure will take second place in the market. Following it is Maxim with 7.6% of the market, and then Gett with a share of 2.5%. In general, aggregators currently occupy only 32.8% of the taxi market in Russia; the remaining share falls on the traditional offline ordering market.

Testing the joint work of Yandex.Taxometer and Uber Driver

Uber and Yandex.Taxi businesses in Russia will soon merge. We figured out how Yandex.Taxometer and Uber Driver can work together without interfering with each other - which means it’s convenient and profitable for the driver.

In December, testing of the simultaneous operation of two applications is launched in Ufa.

1. Download the Yandex.Taximeter application and launch it.
2. First, enter your phone number into the field, and then the unique code that will be sent to you via SMS.
3. Take a short briefing to get used to the service faster.
4. Take two photos of your license and several photos of the car - the taximeter will tell you which ones. Once we have checked them (this will take about 15 minutes), we can accept orders. To do this, simply set the status to “On line”.

You don't need to do anything with the Uber Driver app. Just make sure it's running and "Online" too.

All is ready!

The most important thing about the new operating mode is that orders will not be able to arrive at the same time. Until you complete your trip with Yandex.Taxi, orders will not arrive in Uber Driver. And vice versa.

How to accept orders

• If you are in Taximeter and an Uber order comes in, Uber Driver will automatically open. Already there you decide whether to accept or reject the order:

• If you are in Uber Driver and a Yandex.Taxi order comes in, a small white screen will first pop up where you can accept or cancel a new order. Only when you accept it will you find yourself in the Taximeter:

I have an iPhone/iPad

To use Yandex.Taximeter, you will need a device with the Android operating system - look at our selection of inexpensive smartphones and tablets that meet the technical requirements. Important: in the upper right corner you need to select Ufa.

What if I have two devices?

You can continue to work with Uber Driver and Taximeter on different devices. The applications are synchronized and orders will not arrive at the same time.

I want to take a break. How to turn off both applications?

Just log out of both apps or set your status to Busy in Taximeter and Offline in Uber Driver.

Is it possible to turn off testing mode?

You can: go out from one of the applications or set the status to “Busy”/“Offline” in one of them. The second will continue to work as usual. To return to testing, launch the closed application again and set its status to “On line”/“Online”.

What happens if you delete one of the applications?

The second will continue to work as usual.

What happens after testing is completed?

If the experiment is successful, the new system will work everywhere where Yandex.Taxi and Uber services are available. So don't miss the opportunity to practice beforehand.