Taxi Drivers Sabotage Snapp’s Office in Kerman

Yesterday a group of so-called taxi drivers attacked the newly opened office of one of Iran’s major ride-hailing apps in Kerman, causing injuries and vandalism.

It seems that the fear of tech disruption is getting more serious in some sectors in Iran. After setting its position in Tehran’s market, Snapp has decided to further expand its market to other cities of Iran, but this decision has had quite a few troubles for this company.

Yesterday, a group of unidentified people attacked Snapp’s new branch office in Kerman which had just started its operations a while ago. The company had been recruiting drivers in Kerman since the beginning of February and was planning for its official launch in Kerman in the upcoming days. It’s been said that the main members of Kerman’s Taxi Agency Union along with a group of 150 drivers of private agencies were involved in this act. Snapp has not yet officially released a press release about this incident.

According to Mohammad Mehdi Nejad, the head of Kerman’s Taxi Organization, Snapp had obtained the software licenses from the Ministry of Industry and Mines, however, it still had no “in-town transportation” license from the Taxi Organization and had “unlawfully and arbitrarily” recruited the drivers, as reported by Donya-e-Eqtesad.

Currently, Snapp is operating in the cities of Tehran, Karaj, Arak, Urmia, Babol, Bandar Abbas, Rasht, Sari, Qaem Shahr, Qazvin, Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Qom, Tabriz and Ahwaz.

Snapp is the market leader in the ride-hailing apps in Iran and is considered one of the prominent success stories in the country. This company has received large investments from South-Africa’s MTN Group and Irancell. Iran Internet Group (IIG) is the parent company behind Snapp which also owns a few other ventures such as Bamilo and also ZoodFood and Pintapin which were rebranded to SnappFood and SnappTrip after Snapp’s success.

Currently Snapp has 300 thousand drivers in 16 cities and receives 1 million ride requests per day in Tehran; of which 800 thousand of them are successful, as reported by Peivast. According to TechRasa’s estimation, Snapp has a market share of 11.1% of Tehran’s taxi transportation and private taxi rides, and a revenue of 48.6 to 82.2 million dollars per year. Stay tuned for more information about Snapp and other ride-hailing apps by TechRasa in our upcoming articles.