EUROPEAN UBER RIVAL SET FOR AUSSIE EXPANSION
ESTONIAN ride sharing company Taxify launched in Sydney this morning promising customers lower fares and drivers more revenue than Uber in an attempt to reduce its rival’s stranglehold on the Australian market.
The four-year-old start-up from the Baltic States already operates in 20 countries around the world and will slash passenger fares by 50 per cent for the next month to help grow its user base.
Taxify’s launch comes ahead of tomorrow’s stockmarket listing of P2P Transport, a fleet management company which rents vehicles to independent professional drivers operating taxis, hire cars and ride sharing vehicles.
P2P currently has 695 taxis spread across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane; 10 luxury cars based in Sydney and Melbourne and 15 ride sharing vehicles on the East Coast.
Chief executive Thomas Varga is planning to use the $29.2 million raised through Wednesday’s initial public offering to expand the fleet to 1084 by next year.
He said the taxi fleet would be the main revenue driver of the business but the ride sharing cars – which cost from $199 to $299 per week to hire – were tipped for some serious growth.
“Where its Uber, Taxify or GoCatch, it doesn’t matter. Rather than putting the kilometres into your own car you rent a car from us and use that instead in the ride sharing market,” he said.
Taxify, which claims it is Europe’s fastest-growing ride sharing platform, says it has already signed up more than 4,000 drivers in Sydney and has plans to start operating in Melbourne before Christmas.
The company takes a 15 per cent commission from its drivers, which it says is substantially less than Uber’s 25 to 30 per cent commission.
Taxify’s Australian chief Sam Raciti said the disrupter is tracking for $US1 billion ($1.3 billion) in revenue next year and offers lower surge pricing than rival Uber on normal days of the week.
“Outside of public holidays where it is very difficult to supply on, such as New Year’s Eve, we will keep our surge limited to about 1.5 times on a normal day,” he said.
“We have other ways to compensate drivers through our own internal incentives, but surge pricing is markedly different and has a human element.”