Who ordered a taxi to Dubrovka?

Recently, I happened to get acquainted with the creators of the service GetTaxi , so in this article I will talk about how it appeared and works, and at the same time I will spend a little tour of their office.

It is worth starting with the fact that the company is quite young. She was barely two years old, but this age is right from birth; conscious and capable age a little less - about a year. It all started on the promised land, in Israel - it is there that the main office of the company is located, and it was there that the creators of Shahar Weisser and Roi Mora first got the idea to somehow organize the work of a taxi in a new way. Apparently, they succeeded - now GetTaxi enjoys great popularity at home, and the service itself received funding in the amount of $ 30 million, which allowed it to develop even more dynamically. Recently, the service appeared in Moscow, and from this place I will begin in more detail.

A couple of words about the problem

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Whatever you say, there is a problem with transport in Moscow and it is unlikely to be solved in the very near future. Traffic jams? Huge - including because almost any student can afford a car loan. Why do people need a car? Considering that most of the cars drive with one person inside (he, as a rule, behind the wheel) - apparently, to create a personalized comfortable space, since no one wants to travel by public transport. Yes, and public transport is also good - the metro is crowded, and buses, trolley buses, trams, along with all are in traffic jams. It is also impossible to freak out and “quit the game” - there are no free parking lots;) The circle is closed.
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In civilized countries, this problem is solved by a comfortable and inexpensive taxi - it is much cheaper to use it every day than to maintain your own car. Leaving their airport in any European country you first notice a lot of taxi cars that will take you anywhere. There are practically no traffic jams (for a number of reasons, but this is not about that now), public transport can move around without problems - it’s not for you to set up dedicated lanes throughout Moscow. It turns out that in order to repeat the successful experience of other countries, you can try to organize the work of a taxi - make it so quickly, comfortably and inexpensively. Make it centralized so that every taxi driver is part of a single ecosystem. Someone has already tried it several times, right? Yes, a hundred times ...

To understand the problem, two metaphors from life can be cited:

Stalls and small shops. There are thousands of them all over the country, often they are within walking distance from home - it seems to be even convenient. But as a rule, there you can buy only one thing, for example, beer and chips, milk and bread - for powder and toothpaste you have to go to another place. Department stores, mini- and supermarkets have always been in great demand among the population, and more recently, the so-called “megamalls” have turned the notions of shopping. Huge shopping centers, where there is almost everything - now it is difficult to find a person who would not go to them at least once a month.

The second example, more IT, is local networks. Remember the times when we pulled coaxial wires to neighboring apartments, and then twisted pair to neighboring houses? I wanted to drive everyone together in a quake / halvah or a couple of hours to war in a starcraft on a map with 8 participants - remember, because it was business ... It was, until a large and convenient Internet came, fast as water in the toilet. Well, along with it - Steam, GameCenter, OnLive, and so on - who has not yet grown out of toys, he knows what these words are.

There is no doubt that taxi work should also be centralized - there’s no single (well, or at least a small local) coordinating center for “drafts” to cope. Before the advent of iPhones, smart people came up with the dispatch service, but in its current interpretation, it has many flaws, one of which (the most important, perhaps) is the human factor. First you need to call a taxi and give the address, then the dispatcher gives the order to one of the taxi drivers - someone who is closer, who is a “favorite” or who just brought a box of chocolates last night; the taxi driver remembers the way to the address and starts driving to distant lands.

If we are not talking about a particular taxis (the possibilities of which, a priori, are not enough for a large city, it is very expensive to have your own taxi fleet), but about a whole “stock exchange” (when a company takes orders and distributes them among different taxi companies, as many companies do) then the situation in terms of bureaucracy is only getting worse. But the worst thing (for us, your clients) is that such intermediaries absolutely do not care what car comes for us: the main thing for them is not to miss the order and get a percentage from it. Take, for example, Yandex.Taxi - everything seems to be done beautifully, with soul, but the service is only looking for you a free car from a variety of taxi stations. No, so the problem of transporting passengers is not solved.

Modern approach

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At first glance, the GetTaxi service may also be similar to the parasite's brain slug attached to taxi cars, but its philosophy is completely different. First of all, this is a partner service, where the human factor is minimized, and in the work in the first place are the speed of order fulfillment and quality of service. Not to be unfounded, let us recall the term “Retantion” (customer return rate) - at GetTaxi it is about 90%!

Mobile service application at the moment is under iOS and Android - they develop in parallel and rather quickly. One big button combines interfaces - what happens after pressing it?



And immediately after pressing it, the “scanner” is activated, which, taking into account the user's location, starts scanning the terrain for GetTaxi cars. Unfortunately, in Moscow so far everything works only within the third transport ring, but it is a matter of time - to grow to the limits of the Moscow Ring Road and there is no difficulty in the area.

Soon, the scanner detects the right machine and it immediately starts moving in your direction - you can move it (and the estimated time of arrival) on the map in real time. You will immediately see the driver’s name and photo, as well as the model and number of his car. Then sit down and go. What then is a trick? What is better than others?

And the trick is that for the same money (other things being equal), you will be surprised by service and comfort. And that's why - start bending your fingers.

If you believe Wikipedia, the first "taxi" appeared in ancient Rome. And if at that time a basin was used as a “taximeter” (in which approximately every 200 meters of the road a pebble was thrown - the cost of the trip was calculated from their number), then in modern taxis technical progress has advanced slightly. In GetTaxi, instead of coxae and conventional taximeters, so-called “driver-boxes” are used — multifunctional devices that look like navigators.





He issues orders to the driver, and for the passenger, while driving, he shows all kinds of information - data about the driver, time of the trip, and so on. The route of movement can be viewed on the phone screen:


The difference in maps on Android and iOS

After the end of the trip, payment is made through it - so far only in cash, although the company’s closest plans are to equip all vehicles with cashless payment devices. In the meantime, if the driver does not have a change, he can put you money, for example, on the phone - looking ahead, it is in his interest.

As you understand, the driver-boxes integrated into the infrastructure are not lying on the road and equipment is not sold in stores - they are issued directly at the GetTaxi office. It is clear that they give out not to anyone who wants to - only adequate drivers can participate in good cars (by condition every candidate must have his own car - a foreign car with air conditioning, not older than 2 years), a license for the right to carry out such transportation (the same problem , which came up with our government) and ... and everything seems to be. Each candidate must personally come to the office of the company and provide the appropriate package of documents - if everything is in order, then the applicant is photographed (this photo will be seen in the driver box), and his car will be equipped with additional equipment. In general, something like a sandbox and invites to Habré;) At the moment, about 1,000 people have passed this rather tough moderation only in Moscow; and this is the first moment that inspired me to respect the company - they manually selected 1,000 people on good and comfortable cars. That is, unlike the search engines and intermediaries, they took care of the quality of service.

As for the equipment of the car, after signing the contract, all kinds of stickers, headrest covers, a “chandelier” on the roof, and so on are issued free of charge. Of course, the driver box is for working in the system. Apparently, they will soon issue a device for making a cashless payment.


Dmitry Pevtsov Taxi driver Alexey puts on his car just issued identification marks



But the most useful gadget for the passenger is the 4G router from Yota, which will create a free Wi-Fi network in the car! That is, each car from the “GetTaxi Park” has on board also a good Internet (where it catches). And this is the second point that I especially liked; I take this opportunity to burn the WiFi password from all the machines, Gettaxirus .



But there is another important highlight in GetTaxi, perhaps even a key one (you really don't care how orders are distributed? Your task is to get to your destination). The fact is that the creators of the service added an element of the game to the drivers' work (gamerism, in) - each has a rating that customers form. And here, in the “struggle for likes”, the most interesting begins.

Each unit of the rating means that the client at the destination left the car happy - most likely he was all arranged. And if so, he can take the driver's phone for the future or advise him to friends - it’s better to ride a proven taxi with a familiar driver, right? For the driver, this is an additional job, with which he will only be happy - after all, this is his bread. Even if nobody recommends it live, the overall rating will be a kind of indicator of professionalism and adequacy. Reputation if you want. The company gives presents to the most successful drivers, including vouchers to the home country of the service; and vice versa - if the driver accumulates too many negative evaluations (smokes in the car, swears, did not give change, etc.), then he is transferred to ReadOnly mode, the contract with him is terminated.

Considering that every taxi driver is interested in additional work, for rating points they are ready to work wonders, literally licking the client - they help with luggage, put on pleasant music for you, make the necessary climate control settings, treat sweets and so on - who's ready for that. Other companies even joined the process a couple of times - someone would put his own journal, someone would serve instant coffee. Maybe for Europe this is nothing
surprising ... but agree that the "ordinary" taxi drivers to such a service (at reasonable prices) is still very far away.

By the way, since I started talking about adequate prices. Daily fare - 310 rubles for the first 20 minutes of the journey and then 10 rubles per minute. At night and on weekends - 350 rubles for 20 minutes and further to 13. If without traffic jams, then in 20 minutes you can get quite a lot of time to get there - the average cost of the trip is just the minimum mentioned. There are 2 more fixed tariffs - “To the station / From the station” for 500 rubles (when they bring you to or from any station for 500 rubles), and also “to any airport at any time” for 1300 and “From the airport” for 1500 . Available? More than.



Everything written above was personally verified by me in practice by two orders. The first arrived Volkswagen Passat, the second - Mercedes S-Class ... though not two-year-old, but no less comfortable. “Man” in the backseat, the driver of the Mercedes drove me along the Moscow Ring Road from Kiev to Maryino - taking things, went to Schelkovskaya. What do you think, how much would such a route cost you on a regular taxi? Two thousand, three, four? And on the S-class? You'd be surprised, but the cost of the whole trip cost me only 1,500 rubles. In my case, the taxi car arrived 10 minutes after the call (with the promised filing time of 15 minutes) - a great time, although in the same Israel it takes an average of 3-4 minutes to wait. That is, he called a taxi from the house, got dressed and put on shoes, and the car was already at home.

In general, as you can see, the work process has already been adjusted - now just imagine what will happen next. In the usual mode, hundreds (or even thousands of machines) of service move around the city, who at any moment are ready to come to you at the touch of a single button — without any dispatching services and other nonsense. The taxi driver will not have to go to you through the whole city - the nearest free car is automatically selected; for cars, by the way, this is also a plus - they do not wind kilometers in vain and do not burn fuel, they smoke less into the environment (if you look globally, clinging to each crumb). Good and comfortable cars, “selective” drivers, adequate prices and satisfied customers - it smells like European level. If it were not for traffic jams, then for complete happiness, it would really be enough just to spread the service.

According to the most approximate estimates, there are about 55 thousand taxi drivers in Moscow and the region, of which only 18 thousand work officially using the technologies of the past millennium. GetTaxi on this score is now actively negotiating with the Moscow government - if everything works out, everyone will benefit (the government, taxi drivers, passengers and GT), and the traffic jam situation mentioned at the beginning of the article will noticeably improve - for the benefit of all the other residents. But this is so, something like an ideal case, as it will be in practice - time will tell.

Moscow office of the company

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Despite his young age, the company already has offices in Israel, London, New York and Moscow (in the near future - an office in St. Petersburg; the crystal dream is Manhattan). The Moscow office is located near the Kievskaya metro station - in the same office with the Vigoda project. If my memory serves me, then once in this office lived the well-known SUP.


The office is relatively small, but there are everything in it, from small to large (including the transport department). Here is the head Sergei Mikhailovich Fomenkov :



Near his desk hangs a large TV, which in real-time displays work performance - completed orders, current failures, and so on. On the screen in another room, a map of Moscow is shown with applied taxi cars. Before leaving the office, it was decided to check his work - my order immediately appeared in new entries :) Well, there was a map, a taxi and so on on the phone.



Men and girls about equally. There are about 30 people in the Moscow office, and around 150 around the world.







Something unusual in an office is difficult to distinguish - an office as an office, albeit a quiet one. Although no, something nevertheless caught my eye involuntarily, namely, the friendliness of the team! His cohesion was visible to the naked eye - when I had the staff spontaneously decided to go out and take a “family photo”.



It is difficult to tell something else about the office - the stay in it was very short :)

That's the end of the tale

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As you can see, the principle of GetTaxi is simple in its essence, but at the same time very effective and effective. Unlike “another taxis” and “one more speculators” (acting only in their own interests, soullessly scattering dispatch orders it’s not clear where and to whom) is a service in which they primarily work on the quality of customer service you. And this, admittedly, is captivating - one trip was enough for me to forever loosen up the road in search of a rusty pelvis without a hint of comfort, adequate prices and free internet.

ps In “I am promoting” the publication is written to comply with the rules of the site, I don’t give any references specifically. I have no relation to this company, and I hope the representative of Shatohin will answer your questions.

In the last sentence of the article I would like to wish the company growth and prosperity - I will only be glad if one day they save Moscow from traffic jams;)