The merger of uber and yandex taxi. Combining giants: why Uber and Yandex.Taxi merged. The total cost of three trips

Today "Yandex" and Uber decided to unite online travel booking businesses and create for this new company. This was reported by representatives of "Yandex" in his blog. According to Vedomosti, the alliance will operate in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Uber's business in Ukraine is not part of the deal.

According to agencies, immediately after the news appeared in the media, Yandex quotes on the Moscow Exchange soared by almost 7%. Uber and Yandex decided to invest $225 million and $100 million, respectively, in the new company, valuing the combined company at $3.725 billion. Yandex will own 59.3%, Uber will own 36.6%, and % - to employees of the combined company.

“Our teams will be united. I'm becoming CEO united company, Tigran Khudaverdyan, CEO of Yandex.Taxi, said. According to Khudaverdyan, the companies want to build a “personal public transport» - an alternative to a private car, buses and metro.

According to Financial Times analysts, the deal means that Uber is losing the Russian taxi market to Yandex after several years of intense competition. This is Uber's first strategic move since the controversial departure of founder Travis Kalanick.

After the deal is closed, both applications for ordering trips - both Yandex.Taxi and Uber - will continue to be available to users. But taxi fleets and drivers will switch to a single technological platform, which will increase the number of cars available for order fulfillment, reduce the time for their delivery, reduce idle mileage, increase the reliability and availability of the service as a whole, the message emphasizes.

"The combined company will use Yandex's technologies and knowledge in the field of mapping and navigation services and search engines and the experience of Uber as the world leader among online services for booking trips,"- noted the parties.

The boards of directors of both companies have already approved the deal, now regulators must agree on it. The parties expect to complete the merger in the fourth quarter of 2017. According to statistics for the past June, the combined platform will cover 127 cities in six countries, both services account for 35 million trips per month, their total cost amounted to 7.9 billion rubles.

Added

This unification agreement directly affects Belarus.

- Belarus, as well as Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Russia, is included in the sphere of interests, in the sphere of activity of the new company, which will be formed as a result of the merger of Yandex.Taxi and Uber,- commented on the situation to the correspondent of Onliner.by in Uber. - Agreement signed, formation legal entity and the new company, according to the plan, should indeed be completed in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Uber explained that the new company will start its activities at the same time in Russia and Belarus, as well as in other listed countries, and will replace the Uber and Yandex.Taxi services.

Yandex.Taxi and Uber announced the closing of a deal to combine businesses in Russia and several CIS countries. Compared to previously announced plans, the valuation of the new company has increased by more than $75 million

Photo: Natalia Seliverstova / RIA Novosti

According to a message received by RBC, Yandex, Yandex.Taxi and Uber closed a deal to combine the business of companies in Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

In the combined company, Yandex received 59.3% of the shares, Uber - 36.9%, employees of the new structure - 3.8%. Uber invested $225 million in the new company, Yandex — $100 million.

Tigran Khudaverdyan, who previously headed Yandex.Taxi, became the CEO of the new company. The board of directors includes four representatives from Yandex and three from Uber.

The companies agreed to merge businesses in several CIS countries in July 2017. Initially, it was assumed that the distribution of shares in the company would be somewhat different: 59.3% of the new structure would belong to Yandex, 36.6% to Uber, and 4.1% to its employees. As a result of the deal, Yandex was supposed to receive a small stake in Uber's global business. At the end of November 2017, the deal was signed by the Federal Antimonopoly Service.

Initially, the cost of the merged company was estimated at $3.725 billion. The Yandex report states that now this figure is “estimated at more than $3.8 billion.” As a representative of Yandex explained, the new estimate was formed “taking into account cash Money which the combined company will be able to dispose of. As a result of the closing of the transaction, her accounts will have more than $400 million.

As representatives of the companies previously explained, after the transaction, both of their applications will continue to exist. However, the merger should improve the quality of services of both companies. As their representatives explained, a single technological platform will be created for taxi companies and drivers, which should increase the number of cars available for order fulfillment, reduce the time for their delivery, reduce idle mileage, and increase the reliability and availability of the service as a whole.

The united company "Yandex.Taxi" and Uber will not only transport passengers, but also deliver food from restaurants - the UberEATS service was included in the deal. In addition, in December 2017, Yandex.Taxi closed a deal to buy food delivery service Foodfox. According to RBC, the purchase of Foodfox cost Yandex.Taxi about 500 million rubles.

According to the analytical center under the Russian government, the volume of the taxi market in Russia in the last couple of years has increased by 14.2% annually and at the end of 2017 amounted to 575 billion rubles. The authors of the study call the group of companies "Vezet" the largest player in the market with a share of 12.3% - it was created by combining Fasten Russia taxi services (operating under the brands "Saturn" and RedTaxi) and "Vezet" (brands RuTaxi, "Leader", "Lucky"). The total share of Yandex.Taxi and Uber at the end of the year amounted to 10.4% of the market, which means that their combined structure will take second place in the market. It is followed by Maxim with 7.6% of the market, and then Gett with a 2.5% share. In general, aggregators still occupy only 32.8% of the taxi market in Russia, the remaining share falls on the traditional offline ordering market.

Since the beginning of the year, the three largest taxi services Gett, Uber and Yandex have introduced fixed rates. It works as follows. When ordering a taxi, the client is shown the exact cost of the proposed trip. This amount should not change. However, there are a few exceptions. Yandex and Gett promise to recalculate the price if the client decides to change the route on the way or make a stop. In Yandex, you can change your mind for free, in Gett, you will have to pay 50 rubles for changing the destination, and the further route will be paid according to the meter.

At Uber, the price could go up if the traffic situation changes “dramatically” along the way. To check how the new tariffs work, the editors of Sravni.ru conducted an experiment.

Taxi racing

The experiment began at noon on April 14, 2017. Its participants had taxi services installed in advance: Alexandra Krasnova chose Uber, Valentina Fomina chose Yandex.Taxi, and Maxim Glazkov chose Gett. Three cars were called at the same time.

Trip number 1 - for delicious coffee

Route: Moscow, Boulevard of Enthusiasts, 2 - Nizhny Susalny lane, 5 (Cofix coffee house). Distance: 6.4 km.

Arrived the fastest Uber taxi. The declared fixed price of the trip is 163 rubles, but at the end point I had to pay 92 rubles. more - 242 rubles. Alexandra was indignant at the price of the trip and contacted the support service. They said that "the chosen route corresponded to our calculation of the cost of the trip."

The Yandex.Taxi service turned out to be the fastest and cheapest. Only 17 minutes passed from the moment of ordering to arrival at the Cofix coffee shop, and exactly the same amount was paid for the service as indicated when ordering - 163 rubles. Valya was on the road for 10 minutes.

Maxim (Gett) took the longest to get to the desired point. The waiting time for the driver was 10 minutes. The declared cost of the trip is 230 rubles, but in the end I had to pay 237 rubles. Overpayment of 7 rubles. arose due to 1 minute of waiting, which was not. The promised wi-fi was not found in the cabin, the driver called it “wi-fi”.

Trip number 2 - for a business lunch

Route: Nizhny Susalny lane, 5 - Solyansky dead end, ¼ (cafe "People are like people"). Distance: 5.6 km.

Alexandra got to the second point with Uber without problems and with pleasure: “This trip was perfect. The car was clean, jazz was playing inside, the driver was very helpful, he offered to avoid the traffic jam. And most importantly, we arrived exactly for 196 rubles.

On the way out of the place, Valentina had an embarrassment. She confirmed the address offered by the service, which turned out to be on the territory of the Arma business quarter behind the barrier. I had to pay 100 rubles for the exit. The Yandex.Taxi driver also did not have change from 500 rubles. - it took a lot of time to transfer money from card to card. In total, taking into account the payment of the barrier, the initial cost of the trip increased from 267 to 367 rubles.

Maxim had to wait for a Gett taxi for 10 minutes. The driver said that the total price of the trip was 278 rubles, but in fact the declared 265 rubles were deducted from the card. He came third again.

Trip number 3 - home (to work)

Route: Solyansky dead end, ¼ - Enthusiasts Boulevard, 2. Distance: 4.7 km.

Maxim returned to the office faster than the others. It took the taxi driver from Gett 20 minutes and the initially declared 272 rubles. Valya Yandex.Taxi was delivered in 25 minutes and 271 rubles, without cheating.

Alexandra got stuck in a traffic jam with Uber, but she didn't waste any time. Her driver was talkative. According to him, the shift at Uber lasts 19 hours. They pay 5 thousand rubles for it. To do this, you need to earn 10 thousand rubles. If the revenue turns out to be less, then they will pay 3 thousand rubles. “I realized that all the taxi drivers who say that they get 150 are flooded!”, The taxi driver admitted.

But when the taxi reached the place, the cost of the trip to Uber increased from 129 rubles. up to 322 rubles

	Expected price	actual price	Travel time from order to arrival
		322 rub. (+193 rub.)

Results

Despite the fact that Uber overcharged the cost of two of the three trips by 285 rubles, in the end it turned out to be slightly cheaper than the rest of the services. The overpayment to Yandex.Taxi amounted to 100 rubles. and was technical, due to an error in the address, and Gett wrote off 7 rubles. for 1 minute of waiting, which was not. The Gett service did not respond to a request from Sravni.ru.

The Uber press service explained that in the first case, the cost of the trip increased because it was calculated "based on the fact that the client is standing on the right side of the street, while the client landed on the other side, and therefore a U-turn through the TTC was necessary ". It is worth noting that Alexandra approached the place that the driver told her. The third trip went up because “there was a “GPS wandering” near the Kremlin” (the landing site was 2.5 km from the Kremlin - approx. Sravni.ru).

Representatives of the service offered to contact the support service again, promising that the cost would be recalculated. Orally comment on why the cost was not recalculated when Alexandra applied as a user, and not as a journalist, the company could not.

The total cost of three trips

Average cost of 1 km, rub.

Impression

Alexandra Krasnova:

"I am disappointed. In my case, fixed tariffs did not work in 2 cases out of 3. At the same time, it was not possible to get clear explanations why this happened from the company. Unpleasantly surprised by the prices. If a year ago Uber was on average much cheaper than its competitors, now the prices are equal. And the quality of cars at the service is still very uneven - both an old Logan and a new Toyota Corolla can come.

Valentina Fomina:

“Overall, I was satisfied with the prices. Tariffs are really fixed - I paid exactly as much as indicated at the time of the order, if you do not take into account 100 rubles because of my laziness to correct the inaccurate location in the application. And so I had every chance to win the race, but alas. It is curious that the longest route in terms of mileage was the first and it is also the cheapest. I don't understand why that is."

Maxim Glazkov:

“Taxis in Moscow seem like a luxury to me. Yes, it is comfortable, but long and expensive. It is profitable to take a taxi in small towns, where the cost of a trip is up to 100 rubles, with a company of 2-3 people or in inclement weather (to avoid mud or colds). In all other cases, I am for public transport.”

How was the experiment carried out?

The taxi services Uber, Gett and Yandex were chosen for the experiment. Before the start, each of the participants had one of the applications installed on their smartphones. In two cases out of three, a bank card was indicated as payment, in one - cash. In order to get an objective result and eliminate the human factor, each service had 3 trips. The participants simultaneously ordered a taxi from one point and traveled to a common destination. The average cost of the journey was calculated by the formula: the cost of three trips: the distance of three trips. Each service was requested to e-mail about the reasons for the price change. During the experiment, Sravni.ru did not cooperate with any of the taxi services.

The global services Uber and Yandex.Taxi have created a joint company in Russia, which will also operate in the markets of Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Belarus. The name of the new association is NewCo, the company will be registered in the Netherlands.

A package of 59.3% in NewCo went to Yandex, 36.6% to Uber, another 4.1% to employees. Under the terms of the agreement, the parties agreed to invest $100 million and $225 million respectively in the company. The world media called the agreement the departure of Uber from Russia and other CIS markets (except Ukraine). The price of Yandex shares on the Moscow Stock Exchange hit a historic high yesterday. The fortune of businessman Arkady Volozh, one of the co-owners of Yandex, grew by $200 million in one day.

Why did the deal happen? The agreement can be called the final chord in the fierce competition that Uber faces in the course of its active external expansion, in particular in Russia, world media write. The Yandex.Taxi service began operating in the Russian Federation in 2011, Uber - two years later. The latter developed quite aggressively, its share in 2016 was Russian market was about 18%, twice as high as a year earlier.

But Yandex is still ahead: it has 30%, and also doubles in a year. The volume of the taxi market in the Russian Federation in 2016 was estimated at about $ 9 billion, and recently it has been growing rapidly thanks to these two companies. There are not so many players on the market anymore - in April, large taxi aggregator services Fasten and RuTaxi announced the merger.

In addition to this tandem, as well as Uber and Yandex, a notable company is the Gett service, there are also smaller services - Maxim, Vazi and others. With the advent of Uber, competitors could not avoid a price war, and the reduction in the cost of trips led to a cooling of interest in this business on the part of drivers. Experts are sure that consolidation is overdue. “The Yandex.Taxi company set the goal of a large placement of shares, so it was necessary to gather the maximum audience at any cost. It is clear that in this price war, sooner or later, someone had to run out of money,” said Daniil Vakhovsky, marketing director of the Ukrainian service Uklon.

Who earned more? Uber does not disclose its revenue and profit data for individual countries, in 2016 the global company received $ 2.8 billion in losses. "Yandex.Taxi" in the Russian Federation was also unprofitable - $ 35 million loss in 2016. The service planned to make a profit only by 2021. In April, the Russian Kommersant wrote that Yandex.Taxi issued a mandate to JP Morgan to search for an investor with the intention of raising about $150-200 million for development, possibly in exchange for a stake of 13-17%.

One of the publication's sources suggested that the company needs funds for acquisitions on the eve of the expected market consolidation. "With this agreement, Yandex eliminates an aggressive competitor, which will ultimately lead to improved monetization and profitability," Sergey Libin, an analyst at Raiffeisenbank, told Reuters. Others add that the economics of the Uber project made it impossible to continue to subsidize trips given a small market share. Whereas the organic growth of the company is already on the verge of exhaustion, and it would be more difficult to increase further.

Why is Uber investing more money but getting less shares? The contributions were calculated based on the valuation of the companies made during the preparation of the agreement, says Chief Specialist for analytics and strategy of Mail.Ru Group Alexander Gorny. Uber didn't get much, and the company added more money to increase its stake. But still not enough money to make it 50%. Yandex was indeed significantly larger in all respects,” says Gorny.

“The Yandex.Taxi business in the region is larger than the Uber business, so it is logical that Yandex's share in the new company is larger. We consider the agreement very beneficial for us,” commented Uber.

Uber has profit problems in other markets as well. Why is he leaving Russia? While such a move is indeed rare for a company that is still expanding its geography more often than narrowing it down, this happened to Uber not only in Russia. Last year, Chinese company Uber China teamed up with local rival Didi Chuxing. It was the latter company that became the platform for the unification. Prior to this, Uber had spent billions of dollars on subsidies for local drivers and still could not withstand a tough price war.

After the merger, he received a 17.5% stake in the joint venture, which corresponds to about $ 8 billion. At the same time, the company does continue to suffer losses in India and Southeast Asia, writes Bloomberg. The agency's analysts predict that the agreement in Russia will be a precursor to further consolidation processes in this part of the world, including in large emerging markets.

So what will both companies get in the end? First of all, mutual access to markets and capital. Today Uber is available in 16 cities of Russia, Yandex.Taxi - in 126 cities and six countries. Accordingly, as a result of the deal, Uber will gain access to all other cities in Russia, Armenia, and Georgia. Whereas Yandex.Taxi automatically enters the Azerbaijani market, where Uber operates. According to the Russian RBC, before the agreement, the daily number of taxi rides from Yandex was 500,000, from Uber - 160,000 (the combined Fasten service, according to the company itself, has 1.5 million trips per day).

Now the former competitors from the new tandem expect to serve together 35 million trips, the total cost of which will be about $135 million. That is, in terms of revenue, the total share of NewCo in the market will be about 16%. The tandem participants themselves estimate the value of the new company at $3.73 billion. It will work on the same technology platform, but both applications will still be available to users.

Will taxi prices go up now? Analysts disagree. Some believe that yes, since it is precisely the cessation of price dumping that is one of the goals of the association. Others are sure that prices will remain the same as long as there is still competition, and perhaps the market will continue to grow. The founder of the Gett service, Dave Weiser, has already predicted that prices will rise, and the margins of this business in Russia will stabilize. Representatives of the new company themselves assure that there are no plans to revise tariffs yet. In any case, the agreement will still be carefully studied by the antimonopoly authorities, which must give their opinion within 30 days.

And what about Uber in Ukraine, why didn’t the company enter into the agreement? Most likely, because of the political risks that the Yandex brand bears in Ukraine. “In Ukraine, the Yandex and Yandex.Taxi companies are under sanctions in accordance with the order of the president and the decision of the National Security and Defense Council,” recalls Daniil Vakhovsky. At the same time, he suggests that the deal could also include Ukrainian business, but without advertising it.

“It is quite possible, because the agreement has not yet been closed, its details have not been made public, which means that we may not know everything,” he says. Is such a consolidation of the taxi market in Ukraine possible in the near future? Not likely, says the expert.

“Firstly, because all players in Ukraine are quite independent, and secondly, because our market is in a much less adequate state in terms of regulation than in Russia. There, after all, it is more civilized and orderly,” Vakhovsky believes. The press service of Uber previously reported that Ukraine is not part of the agreement with Yandex. But they added that because of her, Uber abandons its previously announced plans to open a central office in Kyiv to work in the CIS.

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Major players in the market passenger traffic Uber and Yandex have merged in Russia. The decision to merge was made back in 2017, but the final merger took place only on June 14, 2018. The leadership set itself an ambitious goal: to create a "personal public transport" that could become an affordable alternative to buses, subways or a private car. But what were the real consequences for passengers and drivers?

Conditions and purposes of association

The volume of investments invested in the association and amounted to 100 and 225 million dollars, respectively. Most of the shares (59.3%) were absorbed by Yandex, another 36.6% were bought by Uber, and the remaining 4.1% were divided among the employees of the combined company following the transaction.

For the passenger transportation market

The passenger transportation market in Russia is undergoing significant changes. almost completely replaced the classic taxi companies. The competition is getting fiercer, and when two large companies unite with each other, it becomes even more difficult to compete with them.

It should be noted that earlier in Russia several more companies operating in the field of passenger transportation, including through mobile applications, merged their services. So, as a result of the merger of RuTaxi, the taxi "Vezet", "Leader", "Saturn" and RedTaxi, a new major player in the market was formed - the operator Fasten Russia. According to analysts, it accounts for approximately 12.3% of all taxi orders in Russia (at the end of 2017). In the same 2017, the combined share of Yandex and Uber absorbed 10.4% of the market. After uniting by joint forces, the companies will be able to provide about a fifth of the orders in the passenger transportation market. In large cities, this figure can become even higher.

A photo. Key market stakeholders (research conducted by the analytical center under the government of the Russian Federation).