With an increase of 300% per year, GetTaxi “cheapened” trips by 40%

GetTaxi virtual taxi dispatch service appeared 5 years ago. Gett now operates in 54 cities around the world, including New York, London, Tel Aviv, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and its service is used by more than 10 million people.

This week GetTaxi has introduced a new, ultra-budget, class of service. Now the minimum price of a taxi service will be reduced by 40%.

Gett is now exploring new niches for consumers, from food and manicure delivery to capital repairs.
The founder of Gett, Shahar Weisser, told Vedomosti about how the service works in the world market, about drivers' earnings, about investors, about new services and further plans of the company.

Megamind quotes the most interesting quotes froman interview .

About the Gett Services Concept

We realized the idea that excited the minds of our team. The technology and operational skills that we tested on taxi orders can eventually be applied to other niches that relate to the services sector. These are all the services that accompany your life, such as buying groceries, ordering lunch or home services - all that you spend time on. Now there is one trend all over the world - a person strives for the maximum delegation of authority. After all, there is no value in the fact that you personally clean your apartment. Maybe it's better that with the help of our company you can free up time and make the most of it for what you like to do more?

About work plans

There are, of course, more potential categories than we can do now. But releasing a new segment of services once a month is a good plan, I assure you. This primarily relates to transport. Our goal is to be an alternative means of transportation for your personal car. Transport will remain the fundamental direction of the company’s business: it is about expanding the range of car classes, optimizing prices and maintaining high earnings for drivers.

With food, the idea is to ensure that pizza or sushi delivery takes 10 minutes. Some do not believe that this is possible. But the same thing was said before about our taxi services. When we stated that we could deliver the car in less than 15 minutes and the minimum cost would be 100 rubles, for many, the simultaneous execution of both tasks seemed unrealistic. But today it is. And today, the fulfillment of both conditions seems commonplace: we now deliver the car in 5-7 minutes, and the minimum trip now costs only 49 rubles. This week Gett launches a new Economy + tariff, which reduced the cost of taxi services by 40%.

About the demand for taxi services

One of the most interesting points is that the format for using a taxi has changed fundamentally. A person registered in Gett first makes X trips a month, after 3 months - 2X, after 12 months - 4X trips. Just think: when a person understands the benefits of the Gett service, discovers this service, understands the comfort that it provides, he begins to use the service more often and this ultimately expands the taxi market. The number of jobs has grown in proportion to all of these factors.

About competitors in the global market

Our transport service is used in Russia, the UK and New York. But the service, in fact, is local, and if the company does not have 10,000 cars available, as, for example, Gett in Moscow has only 1,000 cars, it is impossible to provide the market with its services, no matter how beautiful the idea may be: with a small number of cars, any supply of the car will still take another time. If there are no cars, no concept will work in a large market - it will be just a company that works only within the Garden Ring.

All markets are important and equal. Two markets - Russia and the UK - are the largest in Europe.
Israel, however, also turned out to be a large market, and this is surprising. There people use taxis very much, the market value is about $ 2 billion, It was a big surprise for us.

Due to the large turnover, Gett can offer more favorable prices, and after today's launch of new tariffs even more so.

About New York Launch

The New York taxi market is half of America’s taxi market, but it’s not very competitive. Only one company works there, and the monopolist, as you know, usually maximizes profits and does not think about the quality or competitiveness of its services. Entering such a market is usually easy by offering a better service.

At the same time, half of New York's taxi market is in demand by corporations. Gett there is known precisely because of the best product for corporations (b2b). Half of the Fortune 500 list is our customers, and we have achieved this in three years. In the spring, we launched the b2b segment in New York. We lower the cost of services, increase the efficiency and transparency of transport services, and companies really appreciate it. Believe me, 2500 b2b clients in the corporate world are a good result.

About earnings of service drivers

An interesting trend is observed on the supply side. We noticed that in fact we give 20,000 drivers the opportunity to earn and support their family. Of course, we do not pay salaries - this is done by the market, but we are creating the basis for the market. And in the end, 20,000 driver families live off this sector. This in itself is surprising, and by the end of the year there will be more than 100,000 such families.

The driver in Gett can earn about 120,000 rubles, but you should take into account that this is very hard work.

About investors

Yes, the best funds operating in Russia have invested in us. The last $ 150 million was invested by the Baring Vostok and Vostok Nafta funds . Among investors there is Kreos - the London venture capital fund. Access Industries Leonard Blavatnik was also among the investors.
[Total investment] $ 207 million, this is really fantastic amount.

On the possibility of entering the public market and distribution in Russia

No, this [public market] is an accessible road. But while we continue to grow at a rate of 300% per year, we are focused on growth.
Just this summer, the company announced its entry into the markets of million-plus cities throughout Russia. Our service has already been launched in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk and Nizhny Novgorod, and launches are also being prepared in several new cities.

About new ideas and services

From July, using the Gett application, you can order sushi, and later you can order any food - burgers, pizza or basic products from the supermarket. It is about basic products. At this stage, our company is not going to replace 100% of what you need to do, but 80% for sure - this is transport, food, cleaning, dry cleaning, and small household tasks around the house.

Our goal is to launch a new service vertical every month. This is ideal. And by the way, after we released the magic genie - made an announcement about new services, the number of potential contractors increased extraordinarily. It seemed to us that we made a universal map of the development of a business for services, but it turned out that there were many ideas that we did not even think about.