“We want to provide technology to taxi companies”

Juan Pablo Velasco is the Latam Advisor of Yangoan international urban transport application that has been operating in Bolivia (La Paz and El Alto) since August of this year. The service arrived in Santa Cruz this weekwith the purpose of providing affordability, quality and safety to public transport users.

Unlike other online services, Yango uses its own map, its routing service and navigation, as well as intelligent order distribution.

Yango began its operations in Bolivia, in the cities of La Paz and El Alto in August of this year. How would you rate that experience so far?

The commitment to start our operations in Bolivia, in La Paz, went very well. We did not think that operations in La Paz were going to grow so much in such a short period of time. The uptake has been very good, we are already associated with more than 20 local taxi companies. And we are constantly developing the service, for example, our ETA (estimated time of arrival of the car) decreased from 5 minutes in August to around 3.5 minutes in December and will only improve in the future.

Due to our special model of cooperative work with taxi associations, we managed to find a good balance in the market. We cooperate with the best professionals in this sphere and help them become even more efficient due to technology-driven decisions.

We are always in dialogue with partners to jointly create the most beneficial terms of cooperation for the drivers they work with. And we already know many stories of drivers who managed to increase their income and who appreciate the opportunity to find passengers through the application. They like that they don’t need to rush through the streets and orders come to them one by one reducing the mileage of the empty car.

Due to the success achieved in La Paz, we accelerated our arrival in Santa Cruz, which is a market with very interesting challenges for us.

What is Yango’s business model?

The business model is based on working with local registered taxi companies and helping them and their drivers to increase efficiency through technology. We want to bring technology to those companies and involve them in the business. That’s why we offer digital accounting and fleet management technologies to improve the transparency and efficiency of operations. We help our partner companies to get more value from their work. It also allows us to develop together.

To achieve this purpose, they have their own system with special characteristics…

We have our own maps, we do not rent maps from Google or other platforms. We map the cities where we operate. This allows our service to be constantly updated and better, since there is a continuous feed from our system. This also allows us to calculate taxi pickup time and high demand areas, offer alternative pickup points to reduce the price of the trip.

What are the challenges you will face in the Santa Cruz market? What goals have you set?

Santa Cruz is a very dynamic city, with a lot of young people, which has a lot of economic and consumer activity. In addition, it registers a very high digital penetration.

Our goals are to be able to compete in a very competitive market where there are two important players. With the equipment and technology that we have, added to the investment that we are going to make, we are sure that our service will be recognized as a tool that allows the citizens of Santa Cruz to have a safe and comfortable service, without sacrificing their pocket.

We are fighting with huge multinational companies, but we are too. The combined knowledge of the local market and international experience are our competitive advantage.

In addition, we think about taxi companies and drivers. We have created the business so that they are part of it.

From Tuesday, which was our first day in Santa Cruz, until now, we have registered a great acceptance by customers. We are very happy with the first results.

We believe we help our partners create jobs, increase security in the industry by bringing our own security technologies to market, and improve the investment climate.

One element that you place a lot of emphasis on is customer security. What kind of mechanism do you have to guarantee it?

This is something very important to us. Therefore, our drivers must meet several requirements. As an additional means of quality control, the app allows the user to rate each ride. Drivers with low fares in the worst case may be denied access to service for a period of time.

The app allows the user to send their route to friends or family or contact emergency services via the app if necessary. There is also a 24-hour online support service available on the app, which works seven days a week and on holidays. If something went wrong or a question appeared, the user can write about it and he will be immediately helped.

Does Yango plan to expand to other cities, such as Cochabamba, in the medium term?

We are analyzing, the business is very dynamic. There may be more cities that we reach in the future, we analyze that according to the behavior of the markets. At the moment we are 100% focused on launching in Santa Cruz and continuing to grow in La Paz.

In August we just launched the service in La Paz and today we are already in Santa Cruz. So stay tuned for our news!