Yandex taxi [online ride-sharing service]

   About the company

Yandex Taxi is an online ride-sharing service launched by Yandex in 2011. The company is a technology company that develops smart products and services based on machine learning.

Technical field

 The technology calculates routes based on real-time and predicted traffic conditions. The service can recommend pick-up points close to the user's location. For example, crossing the road can save time and money.

Depending on the country/region, automatic surcharge rates can be used to calculate the ride price. This rate applies when the number of people in a particular area exceeds the number of cars available.

From April 2017, drivers will know the price in advance. The price will not change even if the driver is caught in a traffic jam or detours. Now, this feature is available in almost every country where the service operates. In countries/regions that are not available, the app will calculate an estimated price that may be different from the final price.

Safety

Yandex. Taxi cooperates with partners who are authorized to provide transportation services. According to the laws of the country/region, these can be taxi companies, taxi stands, licensed carriers, individual entrepreneurs or other legal entities with appropriate authority. The company receives driver training to use the taxi meter mobile app and communicate correctly with passengers. Those who successfully complete the training program will receive a higher score, which is an advantage of receiving orders.

Yandex. Taxi announced a speed control project in November 2018, which is currently implemented in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. The system monitors the speed of the car and sends warnings to drivers who exceed the speed limit. After the system was activated, it was reported that the Yandex driver's speed dropped 12 times.  Similar to Uber, Yandex uses telematics data to monitor driver behavior on the road and may suspend drivers who exhibit unstable or aggressive behavior. 

In order to ensure the safety of passengers and drivers, Yandex. Taxi controls the working hours that drivers can spend. After several hours of work, they stopped receiving orders until they got enough rest.  The company is developing an attention control system to reduce road traffic accidents caused by human factors. The AI   system looks at factors such as blinking and yawning to detect when the driver is tired or distracted. So far, Yandex Taxi is the only online car booking service that uses this system. 

Yandex uses a remote quality check (RQC) system to ensure that the driver’s vehicle meets quality standards: these requirements include an undamaged exterior appearance, a clean empty luggage compartment and an available child safety seat (if the driver is authorized to accept bringing children Ride requirements).

The driver is often asked to take a photo and upload it through the Yandex Taxi app, and then evaluate the quality standard of the picture and ask the driver to solve all problems before continuing to accept the ride. 

Self-driving car

We launched the self-driving car project in 2017, mainly supported by Yandex's own map, navigation, computer vision and object recognition technology. 

We’ve been offering an autonomous ride-healing service in Inopolis and Skokovo since the second half of 2018 - where the car caters to someone in the driver’s seat. 

conclusion:

After the upcoming acquisition of Vesyot, Yandex will consolidate its position in the Russian online taxi market. We expect Yandex to obtain approximately 20% of EBITDA from the taxi business. In the benchmark scenario, we expect Yandex's stock price may reach $52.5-55 in the medium term.