Our on-demand transportation service, Yandex.Taxi, is committed to providing high quality and convenient transportation options for its passengers. We have always believed in offering both passengers and drivers cost effective choices to meet their needs and recently built in even more options. Yandex.Taxi rolled out a new feature with Yandex.Maps that shows passengers the best pick-up location to save travel time and reduce their fares.
Yandex.Taxi shows users when its more convenient to change their pickup location so their taxi can reach them faster and continue on a more direct path to the passengers’ final destination. For instance, by walking through an underpass and moving to the other side of the street in Moscow, a passenger can save five minutes on their trip time and close to a dollar on their fare.
In order to find the best options for passengers, Yandex.Taxi analyzes all possible routes to the selected destination, traffic, and the number and location of available taxis. If there is a better pickup point for the passenger, the app will show passengers how to get there and how much time it will save by walking to the pickup spot. Yandex.Maps provides pedestrian routes, including sidewalks, underpasses, footbridges, and other pedestrian areas to show the user how to reach the pick up spot.
Combined these technologies offer options that help both drivers and passengers reach their destinations more efficiently. "At Yandex, our focus has always been offering the best possible options for our users. Through a unique blend of technologies from Yandex.Taxi and pedestrian routing from Yandex.Maps, we are glad to significantly reduce the time and cost of travel. We are glad to be the only company offering such options to the Russian market," — said CEO of Yandex.Taxi Tigran Khudaverdyan.
Yandex.Taxi’s commitment to high quality service and convenient options has led to significant growth over the last year. Yandex.Taxi completed 16.2 million rides in December 2016 alone, growing at an annualized rate of 452% from December 2015 to 2016. Last year Yandex.Taxi also reached the significant milestone of 100 million total rides.
Tigran Khudaverdyan explains, “I’m incredibly proud of the growth Yandex.Taxi has seen in 2016, seeing revenues grow 135% YoY on an annual basis and the number of rides increase 5.5 times from 2.9 million in December 2015 to 16.2 million in December 2016. This year we continued to focus on providing high quality and efficient service for passengers but also on entering new markets to help meet transportation needs.”
Yandex.Taxi was first established in 2011, and has since become the leading on-demand app in Russia and CIS states. Last year Yandex.taxi entered 36 new cities and 5 countries. Today, our service operates in 56 cities across Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Ukraine. We have over 120,000 drivers and 1200 taxi services and dispatchers.
Yandex.Taxi is incredibly eager to see what the rest of 2017 has in store and we plan to continue expanding our reach and ensuring we’re offering the best possible service for our millions of customers.