How to call and how much does an Uber taxi cost in Ukraine. How to call and how much does an Uber taxi cost in Ukraine In which cities of Ukraine is Uber available?

The international service Uber, which provides services for instantly calling a driver from a car, is now available in Lviv. The company invites drivers with their own cars to join a successful project and start earning good money today. Uber drivers are not professional taxi drivers, but simply car enthusiasts who provide passenger transportation services in their free time.

Connecting to Uber is beneficial for drivers for many reasons:

• The work is carried out using a convenient mobile application, which greatly simplifies the entire work process
• The system always provides large number orders, transmitting them from nearby call points. This allows you to minimize the idle mileage of the car and reduce fuel consumption. In addition, the driver has the ability to synchronize mobile application with a navigator and assess the state of traffic congestion, choose the shortest and most convenient travel route
• A cashless travel payment system reduces risks and increases driver safety

• Working in an Uber taxi allows you to independently plan your schedule and fulfill orders only in your free time
• High level wages. Payments to drivers consist of payments for completed orders and additional bonuses that the company calculates for each trip and high activity of the driver. Payments are made every week. The level of earnings at Uber depends entirely on the activity and productivity of the driver.
• The company is guaranteed to compensate drivers for canceled orders and damaged car interiors.
• Requirements for drivers and cars at Uber are minimal

The most convenient way to register with Uber is to cooperate with a company Partner who performs intermediary functions. Uber partner Lviv is a website company that connects drivers and charges a minimum commission for its services. When connecting through a Partner, the driver does not need to register a private enterprise or LLC. An application for connection can be submitted at the Partner’s office or at electronic form on the website. Registration is free and requires a minimum period of time. After confirming registration, installing the mobile application on the phone and completing a short briefing, the driver can immediately start working.

Working as a driver in Uber Lviv is a great opportunity for car enthusiasts, which allows them to do what they love and receive decent financial rewards from it.

At the end of June 2016, the world's most famous taxi service, the American Uber, began operating in Ukraine. Today the service has already been launched in seven cities of the country: Kyiv, Odessa, Lvov, Kharkov, Dnieper, Zaporozhye and Vinnitsa.

The company positions itself as the most advanced passenger transportation service. And in many countries this is the case. Uber has become synonymous with cheap and comfortable taxis, which are very easy to call using a mobile application.

But does Uber in Ukraine live up to these qualities? In this article we will clearly show how convenient/inconvenient it is to use the services American company in our country.

So that you understand what we mean we'll talk, we give you a brief interactive summary of the material. You can click on any item in the list and immediately go to the section that interests you.

Attention: about how to become Uber driver, we described in detail in the article.

So, from this review you will learn:

How to call Uber by phone

Currently you can call an Uber taxi by phone only in Kyiv. To do this you need to call a short number - 9988 .

In other cities of Ukraine, you can order Uber only through an application on your smartphone. Read about where to download the application, how to register and call a taxi in our review below.

In which cities of Ukraine is Uber available?

Uber is represented in seven cities of Ukraine:

• Kyiv;
• Odessa;
• Lviv;
• Kharkov;
• Dnieper;
• Zaporozhye;
• Vinnitsa.

But in the future, the company does not rule out launching a taxi service in other cities of Ukraine.

Uber taxi tariffs in Ukraine

Uber has a very transparent pricing system. The company takes money for:

• car delivery;
• every kilometer of the way;
• The passenger also pays for the time spent on the road.

Uber tariffs in Ukraine are as follows.

Prices are indicated for the UberX service in hryvnias as of September 12, 2017.

So, let’s say you need to drive from point “A” to point “B” in Kyiv, 10 kilometers between them. Average speed is 60 km per hour. This means that we will cover the entire path in 10 minutes. So an approximate calculation of the cost of your trip will look like this:

20.5 + (5*10) + (0.66*10) = 77.1 UAH.

What you need to start using Uber

Uber is not an easy taxi service. This is a high-tech service. And use it by simply entering the phone number in notebook, will not work in most cities of Ukraine. Actually, for now Uber can be called by phone (9988) only in Kyiv. In other cities To use Uber taxi you need:

• Desirable bank card, but not required. Payments in the Uber system are carried out mainly by bank transfer. Although recently you can pay in cash;
• Internet access. You won’t be able to call an Uber taxi without the Internet - all orders go through the World Wide Web. The company does not provide the ability to call a car by phone.
• Smartphone. You can call an Uber taxi only through a special mobile application. But installing it on a regular push-button telephone, as you understand, will not work.

How to register with Uber in Ukraine

You can register with Uber on the company’s website or via your smartphone.

Registration via the website

How to calculate the cost of a trip

In order for the system to calculate the estimated cost of the trip, you need to add a destination. How to do this?

• Click on the car icon at the bottom of the screen. In the drop-down menu, select the “estimated trip cost” section.
• Enter your destination in the top field.
• After this, the application will show you the approximate tariff.

How to pay for an Uber taxi

Uber works both in cash and non-cash payments by bank transfer. This means that you can not pay the driver in cash, but pay for the trip with a card through an application on your smartphone.

How to cancel an order

You can also cancel your order through the Uber app. To do this, you need to click on the driver’s photo, which appears after you have confirmed the call for the car by clicking on the “REQUEST” field.

• A menu will appear at the bottom of the screen. You need to select the far right - “cancel”.
• After you click on the “cancel” field, the application will ask you to confirm the cancellation of the order. Click “Yes”.
• You will also need to select the reason why you are canceling your trip. If none of the proposed options suits you, choose the bottom one: “The reason is not in the list.”
• Once you select a reason for canceling your trip, the order is considered cancelled.

Important: if less than 5 minutes have passed from the moment of your order to the cancellation of the trip, then you will not be charged money for a false call. If it is more than 5 minutes, the customer will be charged a cancellation fee (exactly how much is not reported on the Uber website).

How to do global company and enter the American market if you live in Timashevsk, small town in the south of Russia? Evgeniy Lvov built his business for about 20 years, tried to quit many times, but in the end he created the biggest taxi player in the world. Russian market(and one of the largest in the world), and also came up with the uberization model two years earlier than Travis Kalanick. "The Secret" tells the story of his company Fasten, which grew out of the humble Saturn Taxi service.

Deal

In May, Evgeniy Lvov lost his drone. The device fell onto the property of one of the summer residents near Krasnodar. I hear Lvov laughing as he discusses with a friend how to rescue a drone, and I think there are a lot of stories to be pulled out of it. But the founder of Taxi Saturn is cold during interviews: he talks only about business, answers quietly, briefly and thoughtfully, taking long pauses, and perks up only after I turn off the recorder and go on a tour of the office.

For many years, Saturn was one of the top six players in the Russian taxi market, but remained a dark horse. Yandex.Taxi, Gett, and even more so Uber were constantly in the news, Maxim came out of the shadows in 2015, when it became the No. 1 taxi in Russia by number of cities, and Saturn was ignored by the press. Meanwhile, the Krasnodar startup launched in the USA under the Fasten brand in 2015 and soon became a competitor to Uber on American market.

This year it is no longer possible not to notice the company. At the end of April, Fasten, owner of the Saturn and Red Taxi brands, merged with the first player in the number of daily trips, Rutaxi (brands Rutaxi, Vezet and Leader). Now this is one of the largest companies in the taxi market in the world. Through its services, about 1.3 million trips are now carried out per day in more than 100 cities - this is the largest figure in the country, according to Renaissance Capital.

The main shareholder of the merged company is the UFG Private Equity fund. Evgeny Lvov, together with a number of private investors, became a co-owner of the new structure and manages it from his office in Krasnodar.

Lvov does not have an office - he works in an open space. We pass the figure of a stormtrooper from " Star Wars" V full height, beer taps in the kitchen (“Open on major holidays”) and we go down to the call center. About 120 employees work on three floors. This is not at all like the small office in the corner of the warehouse, where the aspiring entrepreneur was allowed into by his uncle, Timashev businessman Konstantin Ananyev, 20 years ago.

Start

Lvov was born in big city Timashevsk, as a child he moved with his family to Norilsk, and returned to his homeland in the late 90s. He was 22 years old and had several “crazy ideas” for business.

First of all, Lvov dreamed of a machine for printing photographs. For hundreds of photo studios in the region at that time there were only five photo machines, and the idea of ​​​​buying a sixth seemed very profitable. But family savings Then it wasn’t enough, and now Lvov is very happy: digital photography has killed all such services.

He didn’t particularly consider the taxi ordering service promising business, for the whole of Timashevsk in the late 90s there were about 2,000 landline telephone numbers: “It was generally unclear how people would order a taxi.” But there was enough money for the idea, so Lvov and his family decided to try it - in August 1998, at the height of the crisis, he, his wife and mother got on the phone as a dispatcher. Four drivers came on line with their cars; Lvov had agreed with them in advance. In four months, the number of orders increased from three requests per day to 11. “It was crazy losses and a lack of understanding of what to do next,” recalls Lvov.

We had to spend a lot - for example, on walkie-talkies that taxi drivers used. They were “unbearably expensive” - about 4,000 rubles apiece, while average salary Russian then was 760 rubles. There was no question of a taxi driver having his own walkie-talkie, like a telephone now.

Eight months later, the first competing taxi ordering service appeared in Timashevsk. We had to reduce prices and expand the market, but a year after the launch the company was fulfilling 150 orders a day. The project began to pay off, but Lvov considered this activity to be petty family business with an uncertain future.

In 2000, Saturn went beyond the city limits - to the village of Bryukhovetskaya. True, the first attempt at expansion was unsuccessful: too few people lived there, they hardly used taxi services. But they managed to gain a foothold in Slavyansk-on-Kuban, and since then Saturn began opening several branches a year. These were mostly small towns and settlements, and only in 2006 “Saturn” appeared in the big city - Krasnodar, where 780,000 people lived.

However, Evgeniy Lvov considers the more important driver of development not access to large cities, but the development of technology.

Taxi revolution

Antenna coverage - 10–15 km, coverage cellular communication And mobile internet theoretically unlimited. For taxis in the second half of the 2000s, the development of technology meant that drivers would be able to drive throughout the city (instead of several areas) and fulfill more orders. But there were also nuances - in small towns The connection worked poorly.

Already in 2007, Saturn offered drivers to use a special Java application (back in push-button phones), which automated their work and distributed orders. It didn’t work for everyone: for example, in Krasnodar, where the system was first implemented in 2008, there were too many dead zones where the Internet did not work. I had to switch to walkie-talkies again, and only a year later the city was more or less covered by the network. Gradually, the connection became stable in all cities of presence, and the application for drivers turned from a fashionable feature into a competitive advantage.

The pioneers who started automation grew into major market players: for example, the Maxim taxi company released an application for drivers in the same 2007 (founder Maxim Belonogov even went to Krasnodar to learn from Evgeny Lvov’s experience). The success of Saturn, Maxim and others was, of course, in the business model: they did not follow the path of traditional taxi fleets with cars, but along the path of uberization. Although at that time there was no such word yet: Travis Kalanick started the taxi revolution in the USA only in 2009 and for several years he could not make the product mass.

Evgeniy Lvov emphasizes that his company provides a service - and that is why in 2010 he introduced a fixed fee for drivers per trip or shift instead of a percentage of the amount they earned. “We are not organizing a joint business with them, which means we are not sharing profits,” he says. - When you provide some service, you must charge a clear fee for it. Moreover, for us, the cost of ordering within the city and intercity is approximately the same - and it is dishonest to charge the driver 100 rubles in one case, and 2,000 rubles in another.” Prices vary for different cities. For example, in Krasnodar, drivers pay 38 rubles per trip, and for unlimited access to orders - 450 rubles per day or 6,000 rubles per month.

The driver fee scheme is a controversial issue. In which case the driver will earn more is difficult to calculate, and services, naturally, promote their option as more profitable. As for the fee for a shift, Uber claims that a fixed fee for access to the service is unprofitable for the driver, since he must decide for himself when and for how long to connect to the platform. If he pays for a shift, he will be forced to work it so as not to lose money. “The difficulty is that a taxi driver today can and, most likely, receives orders from several services, and therefore, he will not pay a subscription fee to everyone - it is too expensive,” explains Pavel Stennikov, head of the public relations department at Maxima (in the service You can choose either a commission or a flat fee). According to him, this is beneficial only for those drivers who constantly earn money by driving and can count on a flow of orders from one service.

Experiments on interaction with drivers became the first industrial revolution - applications on cell phones replaced walkie-talkies, taxi services began to receive and process data, on the basis of which it was possible to change the business model

Experiments on interaction with drivers became the first industrial revolution - applications on cell phones replaced walkie-talkies, taxi services began to receive and process data, on the basis of which it was possible to change the business model. A new milestone in market development began when convenient applications for passengers appeared. “We couldn’t provide them with a Java application - on push-button phones with small screens, all this is ugly, it’s uncomfortable to order, it’s unclear how to download,” recalls Evgeniy Lvov. The company began working on the TapTaxi application (later sold to partners) in 2011, and it entered the market in 2012.

At that time, Yandex.Taxi and Gett had already appeared in Russia, Uber was on the way, but they all worked only in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Among the regional competitors, Rutaxi and Maxim came up: the first company launched the application in 2011, the second - in 2012. Moreover, in 2014 alone, more smartphones were bought in Russia than regular phones. The real competition online is only now starting - so far, 75% of Fasten's orders come by phone. Individual applications"Saturn" and Red Taxi (more youth brand, mainly represented in the cities of the Moscow region, Adler and Sochi) appeared only in 2016.

In 2016, the Russian online taxi market more than doubled (from 44 billion rubles to 105 billion rubles), and the share of online orders in market turnover increased to 21%. Within five years, the share of online orders should reach 80%. The company is preparing for this future not only in Russia - since 2015, Fasten has been operating in the USA, where it logically placed its bet on the application.

On foreign territory

“The Russian market was not ready for this project at that time. Even people who had a smartphone used it as a phone for calls and SMS,” recalls Evgeniy Lvov in 2013. Uber and Lyft were working hard in the American market, and the entrepreneur decided to compete with them. “It was still not about financial goals, but about personal ones - can I do it,” he clarifies.

The launch partners in the United States were the founders of the Krasnodar digital agency Rutorika, Kirill Evdakov and Roman Levitsky. At first, Lvov was their client, and then he bought a stake in the agency and agreed to jointly launch a new service overseas (the project’s first employee, Vlad Kristov, also became a co-founder).

The name Fasten, under which Saturn and Rutaxi have now merged, appeared when work was underway on a new application. Its development took about a year and a half, and in 2015 the service launched in Boston. A little earlier, the company attracted investments in the amount of $10.5 million from Almaz Capital and other funds. Fasten is betting on drivers who are uncomfortable with other services: its slogan is “a ride-sharing app that puts drivers first,” and its main offer is no commissions of 25-28%, only $0.99 per trip. The idea of ​​a fixed tariff was brought over from Russia; in the USA, taxi services usually do not work this way.

In New York, the startup Juno chose a similar strategy. Its creators, Talmon Marko and Igor Magazinnik (also the founders of Viber), talked about the human attitude towards drivers, issued 25 million shares for them, and at first even paid $50 a week just for the fact that taxi drivers drove with the application turned on. Juno has become one of Uber's fastest-growing competitors and was recently acquired by Gett for $200 million.

It seems that competing with Uber and Lyft in the US is almost impossible, but in reality it is not. Last May Uber of the Year and Lyft left the Texas city of Austin - there, by decision of residents, the rules regarding taxi services were tightened, in particular, drivers were required to undergo fingerprinting. Fasten came to town in June and quickly became one of the most popular local taxi apps. There are now more than 3 million trips made through Fasten in the United States. The company plans to launch in another city in the near future. Kirill Evdakov assures that the growth potential in the country is enormous, and high competition is a myth: “There are only two companies operating here throughout the country, there are six of them in Russia. Service penetration is four to five times lower if you look at the number of trips per 1 million people per day.”

“Success lies in the large area of ​​work on different markets. This allows you to accumulate knowledge and experience. This is the strength of Uber, which operates in 600 cities. We also plan to use American experience in Russia, and vice versa,” says Evgeny Lvov. Now he is preparing a new application for mass use for the Russian Fasten and can finally use features that the Russian market was not ready for several years ago (but does not want to suggest them to competitors).

War of all with all

“The most worthy opponents are local players who do not have financial opportunity resist, but their will to win is so great that they hold on with all their strength. By hook or by crook they resisted large network and held back our onslaught,” recalls Evgeniy Lvov of the companies that Saturn met on the way. Over the almost 20 years of the company’s existence, he has met several such players among dozens of mergers and acquisitions: “We have not covered the purchase of small companies for a long time, they happen every month - for example, we recently acquired local players in Vologda and Tver.”

The taxi market is consolidating; in the next two to three years, there may only be two or three major players left on it. Among the top three online services, according to RBC, Yandex was in first place (500,000 trips), Uber was in second (150,000 - 170,000), and Gett was in third (150,000). Among traditional taxi ordering services (these include those that have more orders by phone than via the Internet, and taxi orders are not supported by technologies such as machine learning, geo-services and others), the balance of power in 2016 looked like this: 1 million daily trips - from Rutaxi, 800,000 from Maxim, 300,000 from Saturn (data from Renaissance Capital). Judging by these numbers, it was important for Saturn to find resources for development or a strong partner.

Negotiations, according to Lvov, were conducted with many market players, but in the end they managed to reach an agreement with Rutaxi. “We have a very good match between cities; we rarely overlapped. In addition, we were as internally prepared as possible for such a step,” comments Evgeniy Lvov. Secret's interlocutors agree that, most likely, his company was the initiator of the merger. Judging by the number of trips, Saturn was not in the most advantageous position and the merger was necessary not only in order to develop further, but also simply to survive in a changing market.

Two of Secret’s interlocutors in the market claim that about a year ago, some of Saturn’s partner taxi fleets in the regions sold their Gett business. This was also discussed on the taxi drivers forum. Perhaps because of this, some of the drivers stopped working with Saturn or began to fulfill fewer orders, and Saturn did not have many resources to regain and increase its market share. Market sources also said that Gett discussed with Evgeniy Lvov the purchase of the service, but the parties did not agree on the price.

Pavel Stennikov from Maxim confirmed that the company discussed the possibility of a merger with Saturn: “But we did not find an answer to the question of what this would give to users. All these associations decide organizational problems, distribute capital within organizations, etc., but little changes for passengers and drivers. We have no internal need to unite with other players for the sake of organizational structure" However, Rutaxi also came to Maxim with a similar initiative.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to trace the path of Rutaxi to the merger: the founders are non-public figures, the owners of the legal entities under which the service operates are Ufa entrepreneur Vitaly Bezrukov and, apparently, his partners Marat Ayupov and Rinat Minnakhmetov. “I don’t even know all the shareholders of the company myself. And everything that concerns the beneficiaries is their right, whether to disclose information or not,” says Evgeniy Lvov.

He also does not advertise information about the revenue of the merged company. According to SPARK, in 2015, the turnover of legal entities associated with the Saturn and Red Taxi brands was about 900 million rubles (and more than 1 billion rubles, if we count those legal entities in which Evgeny Lvov did not have a stake). The turnover of legal entities associated with the brands “Vezyot”, “Leader” and Rutaxi amounted to more than 1.5 billion rubles - and these are only those companies that came under the leadership of the subsidiary of the Cypriot offshore companies behind Fasten. Together with other legal entities that so far belong to Vitaly Bezrukov, Marat Ayupov and Rinat Minnakhmetov and are associated with the work of the taxi service, Rutaxi has more than 2 billion rubles.

But some market participants say that in fact, companies’ turnover is many times higher - reporting in SPARK is underestimated (and for some legal entities there is no data at all). For comparison: Yandex.Taxi’s revenue for 2015 amounted to 984 million rubles, and in 2016 it grew to 2.3 billion rubles. The entire legal market is estimated at 501 billion rubles (data from VTB Capital Research).

The details of the transaction are not disclosed, but it is known that the main shareholder was the UFG Private Equity fund, which invested about $100 million in the project (previously it invested in the American Fasten together with the Almaz Capital fund). A new round of up to $200 million is planned for this year. Investments will be used to increase market share (including entering new cities), marketing and the Fasten mobile application. Now it is already working in Kropotkin and Armavir, its mass launch will begin in the coming months. It’s unclear what will happen to the other brands the company owns: “We’re experimenting and seeing how the customer will better accept us.”

Despite the fact that the new structure operates under the brand of the Lvov company (Fasten Rus was registered in 2016, at about the same time the Saturn and Red Taxi brands came under its management), he does not consider this an imposition on partners: according to him, This is a new brand for Russia, which the united team will import to Russia. Fasten's other markets are interesting, but they are not a priority for now.

The merger of Rutaxi and Saturn led, perhaps, to the emergence of the largest player in the domestic market. Through the services of the new company Fasten, 1.3 million trips are made per day (this figure was confirmed by its representatives). According to Fasten, the company is now one of the top five companies in the world by daily rides, including Didi, Uber, Ola and GrabTaxi.

In 2016, UBS valued Yandex.Taxi as a unicorn - at $1.2 billion. New company Market participants and experts value Fasten at hundreds of millions of dollars, and some even put the figure at $1 billion. The closest competitor in terms of number of trips, Maxim, was valued by Secret’s interlocutors at $91 million.

The main challenge for the new company is to get out of the ghetto of traditional dispatch offices, where the app is just another way to submit a request for a taxi. Fasten already, in all likelihood, makes the most trips in Russia, effectively operates huge call centers and has serious resources in attracting drivers and cars (which is becoming increasingly difficult for all services). But now it is common to rely on technology. Behind the applications of the largest online services there are complex mathematical models and tools that process data, forecast demand, calculate the price of a trip, etc. Fasten will also develop in this area. However, Yandex.Taxi, Uber, and Gett are operating at a loss, while Fasten is profitable.

And of course, the eternal challenge of aggregators remains: how to maintain a balance between a low price for the passenger and a high price for the driver. “All major players in the Russian market subsidize tariffs for users and also bear high costs for marketing. In order to be competitive with Yandex.Taxi, Uber and Gett, the merged company needs significant investments,” says Target Global partner Alexander Frolov.

The main challenge for the new company is to get out of the ghetto of traditional dispatch offices, where the application is just another way to send a request for a taxi

Discounts for some and extra payments for others, work on a new application - all this will require huge financial investments and effort. And there is not much time left to fight for the consolidating market. The battle for Russia is in full swing - online services, traditionally strong in Moscow and St. Petersburg, have moved to the regions, and regional leaders, on the contrary, are striving to conquer the capital and large cities. “There is a real arms race and budget war going on in the capital cities. Further growth of order aggregators is possible as a result of the replacement of personal vehicles and changes in consumption patterns transport services, and due to the redistribution of the market share of other players,” UFG Private Equity partner Arthur Akopyan assesses the prospects.

Ambitious plans can be thwarted not only by competitors, but also by the state and trade unions. In Russia, more and more prohibitive measures are being introduced (most recently, drivers with foreign licenses were banned from working as taxi drivers), and it is difficult to comply with existing legislative norms. “We have many archaisms in the law, and all this is covered up by security traffic. Take the same one technical inspection before leaving for the line - it’s high time to shift this to insurance companies, the driver cannot carry it out every day,” Lvov believes.

Trade unions demand even more stringent requirements: they complain that first the market was destroyed by Saturn, Maxim and Rutaxi, “involving everyone in transportation,” and then it was finished off by dumping Yandex.Taxi, Gett and Uber. Dissatisfied drivers organize strikes against aggregators, and the courts recognize them as organizers of transportation and demand payment of compensation for accidents or completely prohibit the activities of services. Taxi fleet owners expect aggregators to eat each other.

Overall, this market is on fire. Despite the fact that Evgeny Lvov complacently calls the war a competition, he and Fasten will have to fight to the death.

Photos: Olga Virich / “Secret of the Company”