More than 8 million people move from one place to another in Colombia using digital platforms. Cabify and Uber are the most used in the country. The former transports 2.5 million and the latter, which has lost ground with the arrival of new companies, transports 2 million passengers.
Read also: The two college students who invented Picap, a motorcycle-based app for navigating traffic jams
Driver and Didi have also entered the platform game, and even Taxis Libres itself, a Hernández family company run by the founder’s daughter who opposes the use of apps with private cars, has entered the digital car-hailing business.
But also in the mix are new motorcycle passenger transport applications, which have gained a lot of traction in the country, especially in Bogotá, where business has grown due to daily traffic congestion and especially the prices of vehicle services that are much more economical.
Although business is going well for the majority of the app-based transport companies, which arrived in the country in 2012, many of them have gathered in the Alianza In consortium, which at the time was led by the current senator of the radical Cambio party David Luna, and has always had the taxi companies as a strong enemy who have agreed since the first day of their appearance on a goal that they have not been able to achieve: to push them out of the market under the pretext of their alleged illegality.
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Neither the repeated strikes of taxi drivers that block cities and restrict the movement of millions of Colombians, nor the political battles nor the police persecution, national or local governments have succeeded in banning, legalizing or regulating the transportation service through the application that has found that the legal and civil spheres remain active and increasingly stronger.
Who is behind these app transfer companies?
The Colombian Biker Who Made Everyone Ride A Motorcycle
This motorcycle transportation company, which has 1.5 million users, was founded by students from the University of Los Andes, Daniel Rodríguez and Héctor Neyra, who in 2018 copied the Uber model, but applied it to motorcycle taxis.
With the slogan “Picap gives you time,” Rodríguez and Neira have increased the number of users of the app who seek to avoid traffic jams, reach destinations faster and pay up to 70% less than what other car-hailing apps charge.
Picap was founded with $250,000 in capital, and one of its early investors was Nigerian Fahim Saleh, who founded one of the most popular motorcycle taxi apps in his country called Gokada.
Although it was declared illegal in 2019, in the government of Iván Duque by the Ministry of Transport and a year later the Superintendency of Companies accepted a request from the Transport Superintendency to liquidate Cap Technologies SAS, the company that owns the Picap brand, the app remains available, transporting Colombians in the many cities where it is present.
Cabify Completes 12 Years in Colombia
This is the app-based transportation company with the most users. It was born in 2012. Between Bogotá, Barranquilla, Cali, Medellín, Bucaramanga and Cartagena, there are 2.5 million users. This company arrived in Colombia at the end of 2013. In 2018, Easy Taxi, a company that also came to operate in the country, entered into a partnership with Cabify in 2018 under the name Maxi Mobility and is based in Spain, but Easy Taxi has disappeared and only the Cabify brand remains, which operates in several Latin American countries.
It started with an initial funding of $3 million, mostly contributed by the founding team. Two years later, the company injected significant funds, largely contributed by the private equity fund of Beatriz Gonzalez, daughter of former BBVA president Francisco Gonzalez, Seaya Ventures, which contributed around $5.5 million. A year later, the third round of investment arrived, when Japanese tech giant Rakuten acquired 47%, and Beatriz Gonzalez acquired around 28% of the company.
Chinese who landed in Colombia with Didi
The app-based transportation giant from China, where it dominates 90% of the market, arrived in Colombia in 2019. In addition to Colombia, it operates in 15 other countries between South America, Japan, Australia, Russia and South Africa.
Created in 2013 through the merger of two competing companies, DiDi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, it is a brand of Alibaba Group (one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world) and quickly became the most popular platform in China.
Didi’s shareholders are Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. with 21.5%, followed by Uber with 12.8% and Tencent with 6.8%, the latter being a Chinese multinational technology company and the world’s largest video game company.
Uber, the first to land in the country
It is the second largest app-based transportation platform in the country. It has more than 2 million registered users. Uber received the support of the Supreme Court when it ratified in October 2023 the decision of the Bogotá court to continue operating.
Uber was founded in 2009 when Travis Kalanick and Garret Camp combined smartphone technology with premium car transportation in San Francisco, USA, to create this revolutionary startup and pioneer in the app-based car market. Over time, the service diversified to become more affordable with the launch of Uber X in 2012.
In the driver’s software, an application for negotiating the race.
Founded and run by Russian Arsen Tomsky, it has quickly become one of Colombia’s favorite apps. Its main feature is its real-time bidding system, where riders and drivers can negotiate the price they think is right for the service.
The app was developed in Russia in 2012, and arrived in Colombia, specifically Cucuta, in mid-2018. After its success in the country, the service expanded to other countries in the region. It is the second most downloaded navigation app in the world, and is already operating in 46 countries.
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