Cabify wants to own the way people in cities move. The Spanish-born ride-hailing company is rolling out a pilot multi-modal subscription model to 40,000 users in Madrid this week, with plans to expand to its other markets throughout Spain and Latin America.
The “Cabify Go!” subscription service appears to have something for everyone. All of Cabify’s different mobility offerings — ride-hailing service, electric micromobility subsidiary MOVO, bike subscription service Bive and courier service — are already available under one app, but now customers will also be able to select one of three plans that reflect the mobility needs of different users. Select users will now see a “Go!” button on the top-right corner of the screen. This is a step toward making the Cabify name ubiquitous among city dwellers planning a trip, whether they’re taking an old-fashioned taxi ride to the airport or are riding a scooter to work.
“The subscription scheme ‘Cabify Go!’ is born to make our app their recurring platform, with diverse available services,” Leonor Barrueco, Cabify’s VP of growth, told TechCrunch. “This approach is strongly aligned with our goal of becoming the leading multi-mobility platform. At this stage there’s an opportunity to get closer to our users’ multiple and varying needs. We want to offer our users convenient, diverse and sustainable ways to move around the city at an affordable monthly fee.”
The main subscription offering, “Cabify Go! Todo en uno” or “Everything in one” plan, costs €6.95 per month and gives users a blanket 10% discount on all their Cabify trips, as well as 30% off Cabify Envíos, its courier service. Subscribers also get two free cancellations each month and are exempt from the additional fee incurred from high demand.
Cabify is also offering the “A dos ruedas” or “On two wheels” plan, which costs €19.95 per month and includes 10 free MOVO rides of up to €6 without any additional cost. The mobility company expects subscriptions to help bring on new users. Currently, the rate of new users in Cabify’s moped segment is nearly 1.5 times higher than the ride-hailing services’ rate, according to Barrueco.
“Given the convergence of the platform space where customers can demand a variety of booming multi-mobility services, some users might be new to alternative options whilst some are new to the whole multi-mobility ecosystem,” said Barrueco.
Finally, its “Pedelea” or “Pedal” plan includes the Bive long-term rental service for electric or mechanical bikes, with a competitive monthly price of €49.95 and €28.95, respectively. Servicing and maintenance is included, as well as a 10% discount on ride-hailing trips.
Bive, which Cabify introduced about a year ago, has already spread from Madrid to Valencia, Sevilla and Barcelona. By integrating the service into Cabify’s subscription offerings, the company hopes to promote the Bive service through another outlet, an idea borne out by internal insights. Barrueca says that 50% of Bive’s user base are new users to the Cabify platform.
There are no sign-up or cancellation fees for any of the services, and users can cancel at any time, according to Barrueco. But that’s par for the course when it comes to mobility subscriptions, which seem to be on the rise as the subscription business model grows to answer shifting consumption habits.
According to monetization tech developer Telecoming’s 2021 Subscronomics Report, in the European market, “with a base of 353 million households and more than 2,100 connected devices (22% of the total worldwide), 560 million subscriptions will be purchased this year (25% of the worldwide total).” This is expected to contribute to a global subscriptions industry of almost $228 billion, which is 31% higher than in 2020, with an average YOY growth of 23% from now until 2025.
Other companies that have jumped on the monthly rental train early include Unagi with its e-scooters, Swapfiets with bikes and e-bikes and Onto with electric vehicles.
Barrueco says one of Cabify’s goals in increasing its own business is to contribute to the transformation of cities to be more people-centric and environmentally friendly by making shared modes of transport more accessible.
“One of the company’s top priorities is to ramp up and consolidate our multimobility service proposition which provides our users with diverse sustainable alternatives and aims to replace the dominance of the private car,” said Barrueco.
While the global share of EVs over Cabify’s entire fleet is only about 1%, with hybrid vehicles accounting for 3%, Cabify is targeting 2025 for full electrification for collaborating fleets in Spain, and 2030 in Latin America. The company is collaborating with a number of stakeholders, including IDB Invest, the Ministry of Energy in Chile and car brands to test suitable EV models.
“This common journey to the general adoption of EVs entails tackling a number of urban and sector-wide challenges such as the scarcity of EV models that are autonomy-wise compatible with ride-hailing services, battery life spans, legal certainty in access to credit or the characteristics and availability of charging points,” said Barrueco.
