Uber international technological company, the founder of the eponymous mobile attachment for calling taxies, has opened its headquarters for Central and Eastern Europe in Kyiv.
Oleksiy Stakh has been appointed Uber General Manager for the region.
“All employees from Central and Eastern Europe will move to Kyiv and will work here,” he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Wednesday.
Stakh said that the region includes Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
According to the company’s press release, earlier Stakh was Uber General Manager in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
According to him, in 2017, the service started working in six cities (Odesa, Lviv, Dnipro, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Vinnytsia). The number of downloads of the application reached more than 1.7 million. The average time of delivery of a car (in Kyiv) was reduced to 6 minutes or less; the average rating of the driver in Ukraine fell from 4.8 points in the first half of 2017 to 4.797 points (as of December 20). The average passenger rating in Ukraine at the end of the year was 4.89 points.
Commenting on the increase of tariffs, Stakh said that this step allowed the service to attract more drivers, while the company did not notice the outflow of users.
According to Stakh, from December 20, 2017 Uber also launched a new service in Kyiv – uberVAN. In this category, cars with six seats will be available for users.
The cost of the trip with uberVAN will be calculated using the formula: UAH 45 for providing a car, UAH 5.8 per kilometer and UAH 1.8 per minute of travel. The minimum cost of the trip is UAH 80. For long distances after 20 km the tariff starts to be UAH 15 per km.
Mercedes-Benz Vito, Volkswagen Transporter, Mitsubishi Grandis and other cars will be involved in uberVAN. One of the conditions of connecting a car to the service is the presence of at least six passenger seats equipped with seat belts in the car.
He also said that in 2018, the company will focus on the development of the region, plans to double the staff in Ukraine.
In addition, it is planned to launch a number of Uber services, in particular, Uber Eats (a food delivery service), announced in July. At the same time, Stakh said that it is not yet planned to launch this service in the cities of the country with a population of less than 500,000 inhabitants.
