On the present year, Easy Taxi will invest MXN$400 million in order to increase coverage in some cities and improve the quality of their service , stated Ramón Escobar, director of the ride service platform in Mexico.
The cities where the service coverage of private cabs will be expanded are Mexico City, Querétaro, Puebla, Monterrey, and Guadalajara , said the director.
In Mexico City, the company is interested in broadening their service coverage in the districts of Coyoacán and Tlalpan, as well as other areas such as Satélite, Naucalpan, Lomas Verdes, Ecatepec, Nezahualcóyotl and the State of Mexico.
Furthermore, Easy will seek to hire more drivers. For that purpose, their aim is to open new offices, hire more staff and provide incentives for the drivers.
Easy Taxi is a Brazilian company for which Mexico represents the second largest operation in Latin America , the first being its country of origin.
The company has been operating in Mexico for six years and, according to Escobar, what distinguishes them from other platforms is that their associates are both traditional cab drivers and private chauffeurs.
“We are building a more affordable option for transport, with lower fees and the lowest prices for the user,” commented the director of the platform.
Easy Taxi charges, on average, a 15% fee per trip for licensed cabs, and 20% for private cabs.
The platform has one million affiliated drivers in each country in which it operates.
Although Escobar didn’t disclose the number of drivers working for the company in Mexico, the operation already includes eight major cities and will seek to expand to Mérida, San Juan del Río, and Toluca in 2018.
Earlier this year, Easy bought Yaxi, a Mexican company that operated exclusively in Mexico City, and with this acquisition, doubled their fleet in the capital.
Regarding the safety of the passengers, one of the users’ most important demands, Escobar commented that they are working on improving affiliation filters for their drivers, and investing in new technology for better monitoring their units.
“One of the advantages of being a Latin American enterprise is that we understood from the start the problems we faced in cities such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Bogotá. And that is why the issues we’ve had to face in certain areas of Mexico City, such as Tepito, some parts of Xochimilco or Aragón, are not unfamiliar to us,” said the director.
“We invest in technology. The panic button is mandatory in Puebla. The drivers receive routine calls randomly as well, and we have algorithms designed to predict certain behaviors,” Escobar explained.
Roughly, between 15% and 20% of people applying to become drivers for our platform do not meet our standards because they are required to take a psychometric test and to have a clean record.
Easy has a travel insurance which covers the vehicle, the passenger, and third parties, in case of an accident.
With regard to recent modifications made to the Federal Law of Consumer Protection, which includes the request that private transport companies should be co-responsible of any damages and user claims, the executive director of Easy Taxi considers that ride-hailing companies should only be considered as an intermediate between drivers and passengers, which is why their responsibility lies only in the technological part.”
Moreover, he agrees that it is impossible to keep the driver records up to date, since between 30% and 40% of the drivers that use the platform in Mexico only work for a few months before they stop using the service or sign up for a different application.
dm