The Gett company appealed to the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation with a request to prevent Yandex.Taxi from absorbing the Vezet group of companies. It includes taxi services "Lucky", "Leader", Red Taxi and Fasten. The appeal states that the deal will lead to the dominance of Yandex.Taxi in the market and will limit natural competition.
“We regard the transaction as strictly negative for the market, creating insurmountable barriers to new investments in this industry from new participants and a strong complication for the development of existing ones,” says Maxim Zhavoronkov, CEO of the Gett taxi service. The company is confident that network effects contribute to monopolization, which will lead to an increase in the number of passengers, subsidies from other Yandex businesses, as well as exclusive ownership of the rights to "one of the best geolocation and mapping services."
In August 3DNews , which, according to Gett, due to the deal, taxi services in Russia may rise in price by 20%.
FAS in turn the term for consideration of the transaction, noting that “all persons have the right to present a position on the expected impact of the transaction on competition”. According to Discovery Group Research, in the first half of 2019, the share of Yandex.Taxi in the Russian market of taxi aggregators was 46,7%, Lucky - 24,1% and Gett - 9,7%.
According to representatives of the Yandex.Taxi press service, the purpose of the deal is not monopolization or price increases, but to increase the level of travel safety and support regional taxi fleets and drivers.
In February 2018, Yandex.Taxi and the Russian division of Uber decided to join forces. Forbes then declared this merger "deal of the year." According to the Department of Transport, after the transaction, the share of these two services in the taxi market in Moscow amounted to 68,1%.
Source: 3dnews.ru