Photo: Instagram/thenabatov
Yandex Taxi is Russia’s largest online taxi booking service. Operating as an app-based service, it links potential Russian customers with drivers of over 200 cab companies in Russia and, most recently, in Latvia.
This pretty much means that if you are a cabby in Russia and you are not listed on Yandex, you’ll starve to death. Not starving to death requires paying a fee to Yandex, so that they can list you on the app.
Until recently, the fee for this was not big enough as to cause concern. In March, however, Yandex decided to up the ante and, according to The Moscow Times, increased the commission fees to up to 30 percent.
As you can imagine, that didn’t sit well with Russian taxi drivers, which immediately took action. At first, they called for a boycott of the service. Seeing that doesn’t have much effect, they decided to go to Yandex’s headquarters in Moscow, smoke bombs in hand.
It’s not clear how many drivers were involved in the attack on the building. Images posted on social media show a smoke bomb, not unlike the ones used in football stadiums, doing what it does best on a sidewalk outside of a building.
According to the source, leaflets scattered on the sidewalks read “Yandex.Taxi are bloodsuckers! Taxi drivers aren’t sheep!”
The reach of Yandex Taxi in Russia is so great that last year Uber merged with the service to create a new company called NewCo.
The combined power of the two companies is estimated at 35 million trips per month, that bring them a monthly revenue of roughly $131 million.
NewCo has expanded well beyond Russia’s borders, now operating in five countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.
Latvia became this March the first European Union country to accept the launch of the Yandex Taxi service.
Until recently, the fee for this was not big enough as to cause concern. In March, however, Yandex decided to up the ante and, according to The Moscow Times, increased the commission fees to up to 30 percent.
As you can imagine, that didn’t sit well with Russian taxi drivers, which immediately took action. At first, they called for a boycott of the service. Seeing that doesn’t have much effect, they decided to go to Yandex’s headquarters in Moscow, smoke bombs in hand.
It’s not clear how many drivers were involved in the attack on the building. Images posted on social media show a smoke bomb, not unlike the ones used in football stadiums, doing what it does best on a sidewalk outside of a building.
According to the source, leaflets scattered on the sidewalks read “Yandex.Taxi are bloodsuckers! Taxi drivers aren’t sheep!”
The reach of Yandex Taxi in Russia is so great that last year Uber merged with the service to create a new company called NewCo.
The combined power of the two companies is estimated at 35 million trips per month, that bring them a monthly revenue of roughly $131 million.
NewCo has expanded well beyond Russia’s borders, now operating in five countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.
Latvia became this March the first European Union country to accept the launch of the Yandex Taxi service.
Google News