The Federation of Car Owners of Russia, on behalf of taxi drivers, complained to Dmitry Medvedev about the FAS: the service refused to admit that taxi call services Uber, Gett and Yandex.Taxi monopolized the market and dictated low prices

Photo: Alexandra Krasnova/TASS

Repeated request

Fighters against the “uberization” of the taxi market, having not received support from the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), wrote a letter to the head of government Dmitry Medvedev, co-founder and president of the Federation of Car Owners of Russia (FAR) Sergei Kanaev told RBC.

The letter ( a copy is at the disposal of RBC) reports that in July 2015, the FAR sent appeals to the FAS, the Prosecutor General's Office and the Public Chamber with a request to check the activities of aggregator companies operating in the taxi market - LLC Yandex (100% subsidiary Yandex NV), GetTaxi Rus LLC and Uber BV - for compliance with Russian legislation. According to the FAR, these companies, taking advantage of their dominant position in the market, impose “monopoly low tariffs” on vehicle fleets and individual entrepreneurs, which leads to the formation of unprofitable pricing policies by other market participants.

In addition, the FAR asked the Prosecutor General's Office to check the information that IT taxi companies and their partners, “in violation of tax laws,” do not fulfill the obligation to withhold personal income tax from payments made to drivers.

In October 2015, the FAS refused the federation: in a letter signed by the deputy head of the FAS, Alexander Kinew (a copy of the letter is at RBC’s disposal), it is emphasized that in addition to the three mentioned services, drivers also use other programs, including those belonging to taxi companies. The FAS does not believe that Uber, Gett and Yandex.Taxi occupy a dominant position in the transportation market: the companies' activities consist of collecting and transmitting information between users of taxi services and carriers, but they themselves do not provide transport services.

The FAR considered the FAS's argumentation “illegal” and “ignoring the norms of the current legislation,” and therefore a letter was drawn up to Medvedev. In it, Kanaev clarifies that taxi order aggregators, in accordance with Federal Law 259-FZ “Charter of Automobile Transport and Urban Ground Electric Transport”, are subjects of concluding a taxi charter agreement, and not just an information service. Therefore, they must bear responsibility on an equal basis with taxi companies, including for compliance with antimonopoly legislation when setting fares, Kanaev believes.

The FAR asks Medvedev to instruct the head of the FAS, Igor Artemyev, to nevertheless initiate a case for violation of antimonopoly legislation.

FAS representative Anna Orlova told RBC that the FAS position on this issue has not changed. The Prime Minister's press secretary Natalya Timakova did not respond to RBC.

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What does the Federation of Car Owners do?

The Russian Federation of Car Owners was founded in May 2006 in Novosibirsk . Its website says that any public organization and even just a community of car owners that does not have official status can become a member of the FAR. The purpose of the FAR is “coordination and lobbying of the interests of the social group of car owners at the federal level.” The first project was a protest against the ban on right-hand drive cars. FAR activists also took part in actions against increasing gasoline prices, revising transport taxes, compulsory motor insurance tariffs, etc.

The FAR also protects the rights of taxi drivers: in 2016, the federation signed a memorandum with six taxi driver unions on a joint campaign against online aggregators. “The million-strong army of Russian taxi drivers has actually become hostage to transnational IT corporations and the so-called dispatch services,” said a joint statement signed by the head of the FAR, Sergei Kanaev, and trade union leaders.

“We have about 1 million taxi drivers in our country, which is a significant share of all car owners,” Stanislav Shvagerus, chairman of the TAXI 2018 public movement, explained to RBC the FAR’s interest.

Divided the market

In a letter to Medvedev, the FAR cites an estimate from the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry, according to which the market share occupied by three business entities - Rus Yandex and Uber , GetTaxi BV - is close to 90%. “Other business entities that provide services for the actual transportation of passengers and luggage by passenger taxis, although not limited in the possibility of simultaneously concluding contracts with other companies and independently concluding agreements for chartering a passenger taxi from parking lots and “from the curb,” are forced to take into account when independently determining the tariff the level of tariffs of companies dominating the commodity market, FAR emphasizes.

Uber representative Alexander Kostikov said that the FAR too “arbitrarily interprets some provisions of the law”: “Federal legislation has a clear definition of the concept of “charterer” - a legal entity, an individual entrepreneur who has assumed under the charter agreement the obligation to provide the charterer with all or part of the capacity of one or several vehicles for one or more flights for the transportation of passengers, luggage, and cargo. The authors of the letter, consciously or unconsciously, replace the concepts by proposing that Internet platforms that transmit information about user orders to charterers be considered a charterer.”

It is completely wrong to talk about “monopolization”, since prices have become lower precisely due to competition, from which the consumer benefits, he adds.

According to data provided to RBC by aggregator companies, they take approximately 15–20% of the order amount. To calculate the tariff, special formulas are used that take into account a number of factors - free waiting time, time of day, day of the week, but on average it turns out to be 15–20 rubles. per minute of travel, says one of RBC’s interlocutors.

According to estimates by the Moscow Department of Transport, daily taxis in the capital make 260 thousand trips with an average bill of 650 rubles, that is, the annual market for legal taxi transportation is estimated at 61.5 billion rubles. According to Oleg Amosov, chairman of the public movement Forum Taxi, about 55% of all orders in the capital are made through popular mobile applications.

Based on the fact that aggregators charge from 15% for their services, the revenue of application owners can be about 14 million rubles per day, and more than 5 billion rubles per year.

There is no exact data on the distribution of aggregators’ shares in the Moscow market. According to the general director of the Eurotransservice company (Formula Taxi brand) Bogdan Konoshenko, who heads the relevant committee at the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the share of Yandex.Taxi could be about 50%, the remaining 50% is shared by Gett, Uber and other services. Uber alone could account for about 10% of the market, he believes. Among Russian aggregator services, according to RBC’s interlocutors, the largest are Maxim, Vezet, Taxi City-Mobil, and Saturn.

Moscow taxi in numbers

59.4 thousand permits for taxi operations were issued in Moscow in 2015. In the Moscow region this figure was 71.2 thousand, and in St. Petersburg - 33.5 thousand.

7 minutes The average time before a taxi arrives in Moscow in 2015 is . In 2011, the waiting period was half an hour

Approximately 260 thousand people per day were transported by Moscow taxis in 2015

RUB 94.9 million Moscow spent in 2015 on subsidizing the taxi business

15 rub. per minute is the minimum tariff of Yandex.Taxi. Its competitor Gett has similar prices, and UberX has a minimum tariff of 8 rubles. per minute or per kilometer

About 50% of the Moscow taxi aggregator market was occupied by Yandex.Taxi in 2015. The remaining half was shared by Gett, Uber and lesser-known aggregators.

RUB 984 million amounted to the revenue of the Yandex.Taxi service in 2015. Compared to the previous year, it tripled

Aggregators receive approximately 15–20% from each completed taxi order

At 650 rubles. The average bill for a trip to Moscow is estimated

Approximately 61.5 billion rubles. reaches the annual legal taxi market

Sources: Moscow Department of Transport, company data, assessment of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry

“We will answer”

“In the cost structure of a classic taxi company, 65% goes to vehicle maintenance and payments to drivers, another 20% to advertising and marketing, and 15% to dispatch service,” says a top manager of one of the aggregators. — By collaborating with us, they can completely eliminate the costs of advertising and dispatch service, leaving themselves only the costs of the vehicle fleet and drivers. So they don’t lose anything, and even gain because of the increase in the number of orders.”

He claims that under the old dispatch services, the time a driver spent empty, moving towards the next order was 40 minutes. “Using our platform, we have reduced this time to 5–10 minutes,” the manager emphasizes. “Thus, if previously, with a 12-hour shift and an average travel time of 40 minutes, a driver could serve ten orders per day, then with us their number increases to 18 per day. It's profitable".

The general director of the New Yellow Taxi company, Felix Margaryan, who recently signed a contract with Gett, does not agree with such calculations. “The costs of aggregators are advertising costs, and that’s all,” says Margaryan. “They don’t pay for anything anymore and aren’t responsible for anything.” And I rent land for car parks, buy cars, pay salaries to drivers, pay for spare parts, pay for increasingly expensive insurance - all expenses are growing. And they set transportation tariffs. No one checks them - only the tax office, but everyone checks us. And the carrier bears all responsibility: if the order is made through the application and transferred to our car and something happens during the trip, then we will be responsible. It would be fair if the companies that bear the real responsibility set their own transportation rates.”

How Uber almost lost the Moscow market

In March 2016, it became known that the taxi ordering service Uber signed a cooperation agreement with the Moscow Department of Transport. The agreement will give Uber 90 days to “gradually transition” to the new operating procedure (only with legal drivers). In addition, as part of the agreement, Uber will transfer to the Traffic Organization Center of the Moscow Government data on the movement of cars connected to the system, which, according to the Department of Transport, will help improve the operation of the city's Intelligent Transport System.

What did the deptrans want?

Moscow authorities previously said that if Uber does not sign a cooperation agreement, the service faces a ban on operating in the capital. The Moscow Department of Transport required Uber to sign a document in which the company would undertake two obligations: firstly, to work only with legal taxi drivers who have permission to operate taxis, and secondly, to transmit data on the movement of their cars around the city.

Protracted negotiations

According to the plans of the Moscow government, the agreement with Uber should have been signed before the end of 2015, but representatives of the Internet aggregator asked for a delay, first until the end of January, and then for another 10 days. Uber representative Evgenia Shipova explained to RBC that the negotiations were delayed due to complex procedures for internal approval of such documents in the company - they must be approved by management in San Francisco. In early February, the head of the transport department, Maxim Liksutov, said that Uber had a month to sign the agreement.

According to RBC's interlocutor, the reason for the protracted negotiations was the demands of Uber itself: the company demanded that the government fulfill a number of conditions, for example, provide it with access to the Ministry of Internal Affairs database in order to check drivers for criminal records.

How competitors work

Uber's competitors - (popular taxi aggregator services in the Moscow market) Yandex.Taxi and Gett (GetTaxi Rus LLC) - did not have such disagreements with the capital's authorities. Yandex signed an agreement back in the fall of 2014; it concerns not only the operation of the taxi service, but also the exchange of open data in the field of transport, Yandex.Taxi representative Elina Staviskaya explained to RBC. Gett signed an agreement with the Department of Transport in January 2016, company representative Alena Balakireva told RBC. Representatives of both services claim that their companies began working exclusively with licensed taxi drivers “long before the document was signed.”

Taxi drivers complained to Medvedev about low prices from Uber, Gett and Yandex