The woman heading up taxi booking app Gett’s newest tech ventures says the company’s ‘start-up incubator’ is showing no signs of slowing down.
Global head of ventures Keren Fanan is responsible for leveraging the Uber rival’s existing technological capabilities to help establish and rapidly scale new start-ups that could disrupt other segments of the transportation market.
The team has so far built and scaled on-demand delivery start-up Gett Delivery and Gett Together, a ride-sharing service billed as a new category in city travel which allows commuters to travel on a fixed route.
“With the understanding that we have so many assets to leverage for further disruption – knowledge, data and amazing technology – we created the ventures department,” Fanan, who is based in Israel, told BusinessCloud.
“Gett always questions the status quo and looks for new markets that can be optimised or disrupted.
“The idea behind it is to use the technology we developed and improved over the past six years – as well as our knowledge of managing the real time operations required to support it – and enter new mobility segments.”
Gett began trialling its fixed-route taxi service Gett Together in January with three fixed black cab lines in London and one in Manchester.
In September, the start-up announced a partnership with urban travel planner Citymapper to create a new London service for a flat fare of £3.
Gett Delivery is an on-demand platform for last mile deliveries and allows consumers, businesses, retailers and restaurants to connect with couriers in real time. It offers pickup in less than 10 minutes and delivery within the hour.
Last month, the service expanded its coverage into London’s Zone 3 after launching in Zones 1 and 2 in February 2016.
“Mobility is not only moving yourself from place to place; it’s also moving things to you,” Fanan said.
“We use our advanced technology that matches passengers and drivers in real time, to offer additional services that simplify our lives. We want to give our users options. We want to save them time.
“Our technology is based on big data, heat maps, predictive algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence – we do everything in our power to make sure that the ideal passenger meets the ideal driver, in real time.
“In the same way that the ride-hailing industry was completely disrupted by technology, logistics and mass transit can be disrupted as well.”
Fanan told BusinessCloud that the ventures department has grown fivefold in the last year and has “no plans to slow down”.
“We currently operate in UK, Israel and Russia and there’s clearly plenty of growth potential within our existing markets.”