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When Alvimar da Silva realized that Uber was not reaching some of the most dangerous and remote areas of Brazil's largest city, Sao Paulo, he saw an opportunity: if the popular carpooling service did not go there he would do it.
After six months of serving the United States in this dead-end city, da Silva launched its own competing service, JaUbra, in Brazil's vast district of Brasilandia in 2017.
Since then, about 50 drivers have signed up and da Silva hopes to expand to other metropolitan areas with 12 million inhabitants – the city with the largest number of Uber in the world.
Uber and other carpool applications "began vetoing neighborhoods considered risky and difficult to access. But as we are already here, we have no problem, "says da Silva, going to the street where he was born 50 years ago, banging to greet the people.
Few people from outside dare to enter parts of Brasilandia where many of its 265,000 inhabitants live in favelas composed of precarious multi-storey constructions set in a labyrinth of streets covering the hills 15 kilometers from the center of Sao Paulo.
Unbridled crime and low Internet access mean that many Uber drivers do not accept trips to the district.
And for those who live in Brasilandia, the application is impossible to access from different points, as AFP discovered during a recent visit.
Other carpooling applications do not venture there at night, complains a resident, who depends on public transport.
– Lifestyle change –
As soon as it was announced that JaUbra had entered the winding streets without figures, da Silva noticed that the majority of his clients were residents who called him to take them to the doctor, in the market for fresh produce or dancing in the funk on weekends.
As the business grew, da Silva started bringing other drivers to the area to meet the demand.
"There are difficult access points for public transport, which makes us the only option for many people who missed a doctor's appointment," says da Silva's daughter. Aline Landim, who left a job at a bank to work full time. at JaUbra.
Seeing the potential of the business, Landim invested in JaUbra the payment she had received from her former employer, that her father was about to run out of garage and save his bookings on scraps of paper.
Now they have their own app and are about to migrate to a more sophisticated platform for which they have 500 interested drivers.
"People think that for starters, it takes a lot of money, but nothing has been done," says Landim, 29, sitting in JaUbra's new location, a modest office that they rented with the help of 32,000 reais ($ 8,300), financed by local government and 20,000 reais from a novice investor.
"We only had a computer, a phone, the idea, the creativity and the physical space lent by a friend," she says.
Despite 3,000 trips a month and a 15% commission on each trip, JaUbra's earnings are enough to keep the family business afloat, says Landim, whose brother is also involved.
– "Nobody gets bothered" –
It has not been easy to launch a transportation app on the outskirts of a city where crime and gaping inequality go hand in hand. According to a recent study, life expectancy can vary up to 23 years between neighborhoods.
Vila Brasilandia, one of the areas inside the district, is ranked as the third most violent in Sao Paulo. Yet, JaUbra has not recorded any attacks in the last year.
"Since I joined the application, I have not even had a scratch," says Nelson Cobertino, who started flying for JaUbra last year.
"When people see the sticker (JaUbra), they say" it's from the neighborhood, "and nobody bores you because they know you're meeting a need and they respect it," says Cobertino, who was driving for Uber and worked bank.
The US platform – which admits it can block demands in certain areas and at certain times of the day for security reasons – recently announced plans to launch a pilot program in Heliopolis, a southern favela Sao Paulo, with designated withdrawal points to strengthen its presence. on the neglected outskirts of the city.
Uber also offers Brazil a tailored service for customers with old smartphones and slow Internet connections, as well as for those who prefer to share their trip to save money.
But da Silva is not scared by the competition.
"At first everyone thought we would not do it, we would stop," he says.
"But two years later and we are still here. I will leave my family a legacy for the rest of their lives. "
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