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The French company Chauffeur-Privé will develop aggressively over the next two years. That's why the company changes its name to Kapten – a name that sounds less French.
"We wanted to share with you a very important piece of information," said Yan Hascoet, co-founder and CEO of Kapten, at a press conference. "We changed our name while maintaining the same positioning."
Kapten is one of the leading French carpool players and has just been launched in Lisbon (2 million users in France and 80,000 in Lisbon). The company will launch in Geneva next week and in London in the coming weeks. By 2020, Kapten is expected to be in 15 major cities.
Kapten in smart applications
As a reminder, Daimler AG acquired a majority stake in Chauffeur-Privé / Kapten in December 2017. Daimler AG and BMW Group then merged their mobility services business into a single entity called Intelligent Apps.
Kapten confirmed that smart applications would become Jurbey. Floating services, parking services, billing services and Intelligent Apps route apps will merge to simplify product offerings.
However, the carpooling services offered by Intelligent Apps (private driver, mytaxi, Clever Taxi and Beat) will not be merged at the moment.
"It seems obvious that there will be a consolidation in five years in one way or another," Hascoet said. "But it is not on the agenda today."
Hascoet believes that the carpool space remains extremely competitive and that there is room for growth. It seems better to keep several services for the moment to see how this will happen in the years to come. Kapten, however, plans to integrate the Intelligent Apps Hive scooter service into his app.
A new name and new features
Kapten is also using today's rebranding to launch an aggressive advertising campaign. The company will spend "millions of euros".
There will also be some changes to the service. The minimum price is now 6 € instead of 8 € as on Uber. Kapten will make up for this change by paying drivers the equivalent of an 8 € ride for the moment. Ultimately, Kapten wants drivers to generate as much revenue with € 6 of trips. In any case, Kapten makes a 20% discount on each trip.
The drivers are also enjoying new features from today. The free waiting time has gone from 5 minutes to 3 minutes, which should help drivers lose less time. There is also a new feature to get home and accept walks along the way.
The company also took the opportunity to share some figures. Over the last 7 years, the company has successfully attracted 2 million customers and 200 companies, which generated 20 million trips in total. In 2018 alone, Kapten handled 7.5 million journeys with an average price of 17 to 18 €. He currently works with 22,000 drivers and 250 employees. Kapten will hire approximately 100 employees in 2019.
Kapten generated a turnover of $ 54.9 million in 2016, $ 113 million in 2017 and $ 180.8 million in 2018 ($ 48.6 million, $ 100 million). 39; euros and 160 million euros respectively). Kapten wants to multiply his income by 5 by 2020.
In his announcement video, Kapten also differentiated his Uber service by stating that they would continue to pay taxes in the local markets where they operate. Society wants to be the good guy, let's see if that's enough to conquer a piece of the market.
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