Beat is ready to compete for the Mexican private transport market, challenges other platforms’ margins

Contxto – Talk about risk-taking – last Wednesday, Beat became the latest company to join Mexico’s on-demand transportation industry.

Now, Beat plans to recruit ten times more drivers in Mexico City than any other city in Latin America. Company officials want to turn the megalopolis into their largest, most important market.

How will Beat accomplish this when there are already so many contenders, may you ask? Well, their initial statement promised an appealing income for drivers. Beat guaranteed up to MX$30,000 in weekly income for the first drivers that sign up here, followed by a confirmation.

Honestly, this all sounds too good to be true. Skepticism is already visible on the comment section of some social media networks. Some users even consider this strategy to be a mere “hook,” but who knows what else they got up their sleeves.

Anyways, although the recruitment process for drivers and corporate staff started this week, the company won’t start operations until March.

Either way, it seems there’s a new player in town.

Car Wars

Beat, originally a taxi location app from Greece, crossed the pond in 2014. In the process, they have established themselves as a leading market in their first Latin American city, Lima, Peru.

Interestingly enough, they entered Peru the same year as Uber. Someway, somehow, they managed to beat them, winning the majority share of the market. Pun 100% intended.

Daimler, owned by Mercedez Benz, acquired Beat in 2017 with a transaction valued at US$43 million. This deal catalyzed the platform’s expansion to Colombia and Chile.

Currently, it has operations in Lima, Bogotá, Santiago and their home city, Athens.

Beat’s assertive plans

Beat’s goal is to become the main transport platform in Mexico City in less than three years. This is definitely ambitious.

Currently, there are over five different brands competing over the industry’s consumers including Uber, Didi, Cabify, Yaxi and Easy. Apparently, the Daimler-owned startup still sees a valuable opportunity and does not consider the market to be saturated, yet.

We will invest a lot to give attractive profits for drivers, but also in consumer marketing to create awareness and generate demand for Beat travel

Sanja Ilic, Beat’s COO

Out of their 200 thousand partner drivers, 120 thousand are operating in Latin America. Worldwide, they have around five million users.

Guadalajara and Monterrey are part of the company’s expansion plan across the Aztec nation. They intend to cover the most important Latin American cities by 2020.

With this, Mexican citizens will observe the entrance of the sixth on-demand transport platform. The good news is that consumers will possess the decision power. The bad news is that it could become a commoditized business. We all know how most pricing and margins wars end – not well.

Let the most economically attractive option win.

– VC