Moscow's largest taxi fleet went bankrupt

The state-owned VEB-Leasing filed for bankruptcy of the largest taxi company in Moscow, Asap (Nexi brand). The company, which managed almost 3,000 taxis, has not been operating since December, and a whole “taxi graveyard” has formed from its cars near the Third Ring Road.

• According to Meduza, at the end of 2017, Asap stopped paying money for cars received from VEB-Leasing. Because of this, cars were confiscated from the company, which are now parked in the East of Moscow in the TTK area - the so-called "taxi cemetery" .
• Asap was sued by Gett and Yandex.Taxi aggregators for 190 and 57 million rubles, respectively. Yandex explained that the company's claim is related only to the return of advertising services that were not provided in full.
• According to Meduza's source, drivers have suffered because of Asap's debts: some of them have not been paid their salaries for several weeks.
• Yandex.Taxi and Gett noted that Asap's problems did not affect customers, as the place of the taxi company was taken by cars of other companies.
• Asap has the largest fleet of its own taxi cars in Moscow: in 2016, there were 2,806 cars there, the company's revenue was 1.3 billion rubles. The owner of Asap is an offshore company registered in the Seychelles.

What do I get from this?

Cars were confiscated from Nexi at the end of last year, so now this will not affect the end user, says Oleg Amosov, head of the Taxi Forum public movement. The most noticeable consequence of the ongoing bankruptcy is the rise in prices for ordering a minivan taxi, he says: the Nexi fleet was mainly Ford Galaxy minivans: “Yandex.Taxi reduced the minimum price for minivan transportation from 700 to 199 rubles. Now it has grown to 399 rubles.