‘Fasten’ a new Boston based startup is ready to compete with Uber and Lyft. According to the company, it can build a better business than Uber and Lyft by charging less to drivers and passengers. According to Boston Herald, the Fasten began their business in Boston in September 2015 and now raised nearly approx $9 million. Fasten provides rides that are more profitable and reasonable for drivers and riders.
The business of Lyft and Uber is at the high peaks. They have recruited so many drivers throughout the cities to use their personal cars to provide transportation services. Now Uber valued at approximately $60 billion just by taking a percentage of every ride a chauffeur completes with their app.
Fasten is trying to make some changes in the world of ride-sharing. They only take $1 from their chauffeurs for each ride they completed with their app. According to the founder of the company, Christoff, they are providing an easy and affordable platform for the drivers and passengers. For them, both the riders and drivers are paying customers.
Currently, Fasten headquarter is based near South Station and the company is looking to expand their space to a nearby building. According to Christoff, the company’s chairman Evgeny Lvov contributed the whole amount for the company and now aiming to raise it to $9.2 million. Before this, Lvov has run a car service known as Saturn in Russia for 17 years. Christoff said that Fasten has 80 designers, app developers, and other staff in Russia and plans to add to its nine-person staff in Boston.
For any company looking to compete with Uber and Lyft, the first and ever biggest challenge is to build a network. It means recruiting both riders and passengers. The employees of Fasten have used competitors’ apps to gather drivers for a ride and use it as a pitching session like Uber and Lyft.
The co-founder and COO Vlad Christoff said, “At the end of the day, we sell a piece of information to a driver who is the actual service provider. They move them in the physical world from point A to point B. We sell a piece of information to the driver that someone needs a ride. We hope our cheaper prices will make us more attractive than Uber and Lyft. But on this co-founder and CEO Kirill Evdakov told the Boston Herald, “People will still love Uber, people will still love Lyft, but there is room for us as well. It’s not a zero-sum game, it’s not a winner-takes-all game”.
This is not an easy job for Fasten. They have to face many huge challenges. One of them is the recruitment enough drivers for the ride-sharing market. It is a clear fact that everyone wants a quick service. Everybody expects to get picked up quickly and it is only possible if a transportation service has enough chauffeurs present on the road all times. The low price rate for their driver is the one and only trick right now for Fasten to run its business.
Through their affordable service, Evdakov wants to provide benefit to drivers and riders just to make some improvements in the whole ride-sharing industry of the country. The company is focusing on establishing their business in the current cities rather than promoting it to other markets. He said, “We came to Boston and Austin to give people a choice. I think we all have to embrace this increased competition because it will ultimately benefit everyone. If riders or drivers are not happy, they can switch to a different company. That is what pushes us all to be better”.
