By merging with Easy, Cabify would double its corporate business

With the merger of Cabify and Easy, the companies expect to increase revenues in several of their business lines, including the corporate service, in which they expect to double the figures reported in 2018.

For Juan Manuel Moreno, general manager of Easy, and who will also be in charge of the corporate line of the Cabify transport application, he explained that the ambitious goal of growth has to do, among other things, with the users of that platform not only They will have the use of special transport service cars available, but they will also be able to access the taxi service. "For the corporate service line, the merger will help us a lot, taking into account that the offer will grow significantly with the entrance of taxis," Moreno said.

The two companies, which are part of the Maxi Mobility Group, operated independently until last week when they announced the integration of their teams in the country. According to Manuel Torres, manager of Cabify for Colombia, and Juan Felipe Moreno, manager of Easy Taxi, this merger means that there will be a synergy between both teams and will continue their consolidation. "We also seek to remove all the precepts of the alleged rivalry between taxi drivers and Cabify drivers.

What we do is compete against the use of our vehicle. We want to be an integrated mobility platform, "Torres said. The integration of the teams meant, in the same way, a transfer of the employees to a single office. "In terms of equipment, for now, we maintain the structure as we currently have it. We had already made some optimizations. However, there is no decision of substantial cuts. Simply a reorganization of the team, "Moreno said.

Another goal of organizations with integration is to diversify their portfolio of services to each of the segments that are targeted. "With this, we achieve a competitive advantage because the demand can be much better satisfied by having several modes of mobility available in a single application. Of course, we keep the two applications running regularly, "Torres added.

In fact, since December of last year organizations have already begun to include Easy options in the Cabify application. That way, users could request taxi service through the Cabify app. According to Moreno, that test has been positive in the time it has been operating. "We found that 50% of current users of Cabify have done the management to get a taxi through the application. Although the figure is very good, we as business executives have much higher expectations, "he said.

Regarding the performance of the business as a whole, the managers explained that expectations are very high by the end of this year. "Colombia last year grew 152% and we expect that we will have similar or superior performance for this year, taking into account the new functions that will come and the increase of the offer with the integration", added Moreno.

Given the possibility of expanding to more cities, the managers explained that for now, that is not the priority. "In Cabify we are in four cities: Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, and Barranquilla and with Easy Taxi we are in 20 cities. We have fairly broad coverage. It is not the expectation in the short term to reach more cities, we will focus on consolidation, "Torres said.

Another announcement made by managers is the arrival of a new mobility alternative: electric skateboards. In an alliance with the Movo start-up, the application will bring this mobility option for Colombia, which, among other things, seeks to be a micro-mobility solution. "The idea is to enable this service in the first half of the year and to integrate our services and complement each other," they explained.

The idea of Cabify is to bring 20,000 electric skateboards to the region, in addition to Spain, which will be distributed in Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Chile. To use the service, explained Torres and Moreno, the user must download the application and follow the instructions. "The goal of us as a business group is to turn mobility into a sustainable service," Moreno concluded.

Although there is still no rule that regulates the provision of transport service in private vehicles, Torres and Moreno insisted that the integration of the two platforms is also a way to demonstrate that both services can coexist. "We are open to sitting down with the Government and interested parties to discuss how the service of private cars can be regulated," said Torres. Last year the application promoted a draft bill to regulate the service, which includes the creation of a private transport category.