Taxi app ‘taxi.eu’ wants to massively strengthen its network and make taxi radio circuits cooperate better. That is why, in the near future, the brand will come under the umbrella of a newly established company provisionally called ‘Taxi Europe AG’ which will also be open to outside investors. The existing partners – mostly taxi radio circuits – will receive preferential shares.

This concept was presented by the two taxi.eu CEOs, Hermann Waldner (Taxi Berlin) and Michael Weiss (FMS/Austrosoft) last Tuesday during Eurocab, the user-meeting FMS/Austrosoft held in Luxembourg. During this meeting, most of the 165 connected taxi partners from 11 countries (80 management staff and employees were present) seemed to welcome the ideas.

Together they represent 65,000 connected vehicles, 205.000 drivers and 300 million taxi trips per year. FMS/Austrosoft, which sees itself as the most important European supplier of dispatch equipment and software for the taxi industry, now wants to offer solutions to meet future mobility needs.

“We must act together,” said CEO Waldner (Taxi Berlin) in Luxembourg, “and continue to digitize our dispatching and IT, offer every customer segment from young people to business customers a suitable and attractive product and, above all, offer our business customers a pan-European mobility service. We also need to work more closely with public transport companies on the new mobility market to offer flexible and sustainable first-and-last-mile solutions.”

CEO Weiss added that the intention is to have the loose network of taxi radio circuits which grew from 2012 cooperate more closely. That is why a fundamentally different structure is needed in the form of a jointly-owned company, in which not only all taxi centres play a role, but also other partners and external investors.

To this end, the current taxi.eu and FMS partners receive special conditions and get a starting discount. A share costs 20 euros and the taxi radio circuits acquire one share per participating taxi. There will also be a simultaneous capital increase of 300,000 euros in the new company.

In addition to these special conditions, partners of taxi.eu also receive special rights. The joint use of the strong ‘taxi.eu’ brand will be based on a franchise model with a payment per taxi.eu-order. However, this proposal only makes sense if most partners participate. If options for at least 30,000 shares are taken before October 1, 2019, the project will get the green light, Weiss and Waldner promised during the Eurocab meeting. The necessary paperwork has already been done.

The call to show interest in participating in this new structure at the Luxembourg Eurocab meeting, got a clear yes from most partners present. Most attendees showed a great confidence in the taxi.eu app. Taxi.eu is now available via Amazon Echo, Google Maps, Sixt and Passangr, and taxi.eu is the second app in the Google and Apple rankings just after myTaxi. The app also scores very well in comparative tests. However, these positive results are obtained at considerably lower investments than those of competitors such as Uber and myTaxi who invest a multiple of the investments available to taxi.eu. (with the cooperation of Jürgen Hartmann, TaxiTimes).

• ‘Taxi Europa NV’, ‘launched’ by CEO’s Waldner and Weiss at the Eurocab meeting in Luxemburg, is taxi.eu’s answer to Uber, myTaxi and other apps.