Taxi service is a great business option for both large and small towns. With the right approach, the money invested in a taxi pays off in just six months and begins to make a profit. Let's figure it out: how to open a taxi from scratch, and what is needed for this.

Explore the Market

First of all, you need to study the market. Find out if there are working taxi services in your locality, find out how many trips one car makes on average per day, what average check collects and other useful nuances. To do this, just take a ride with a taxi driver and talk to him. You can collect information on city forums or social networks - people are happy to share information and recommend their favorite services.

Taxi from scratch - a profitable and interesting business

Think Concept

Most likely, there will already be several operating taxi services in your city. There is no need to be afraid of this. In order to effectively deal with competitors, you need to come up with a unique selling proposition. Offer your customers the best conditions: free car delivery, discounts, various promotions. Such proposals may include:

1. Free kilometers for regular customers.
2. Delivery of products from the store.
3. Preferential service for events, weddings, corporate parties.
4. VIP transportation.
5. Services of a children's taxi or a taxi for pensioners.
6. Callback, ordering a car from the website or via SMS.

Think about what else you can offer your customers. Entering the transportation market is quite difficult, but in order to stay on it, you need really interesting offers.

How to register

Let's make it clear right away: you will not buy cars and hire drivers. It's not the best way. It is much more efficient to work as an intermediary, taking calls from customers and addressing them to free drivers. That is why it will be enough for you to obtain a patent of an ordinary private entrepreneur and provide classic information services.

You can also register an individual entrepreneur - in the future it will be easier for you to pay taxes. Also, be sure to study Federal Law No. 68, which regulates the activities of taxi services.

Note:this law describes all the requirements for cars, drivers and taxi services, but its requirements may vary in different regions.

Follow the changes and additions to this Federal Law: various changes are made to it regularly. Also, in some cases, you will need to obtain a license for cars. Usually it is issued at the local branch of the Ministry of Transport. The procedure is not particularly difficult - you will receive a license for about 5 thousand rubles for 5 years.

You do not need to buy new cars - look for good drivers with vehicles

Obtaining an OKVED code

To open a taxi dispatch service , you will need to get the code of the all-Russian classifier of types of economic activity (abbreviated as OKVED). In total, it includes 17 categories, of which we are only interested in these items:

1. 52.61.2. Allows the retail sale of various goods and services via the Internet and computer networks.
2. 63.2. Allows you to engage in auxiliary transport activities.
3. 72.6. Allows you to conduct various activities related to information technology and computer technology.
4. 74.83. This OKVED allows you to provide editorial and secretarial services, as well as translation services.
5. 92.4. Allows to engage in the activities of news agencies.

You can choose either one of these codes, or register them all, which will expand your capabilities somewhat.

* Calculations use average data for Russia

Starting investments:

6 000 000 ₽ (taxi fleet for 10 taxis)

Revenue:

Net profit:

Payback period:

What do you need to start a taxi business and how can you make money on it today? The situation on the market, the most profitable car brands for taxis and calculations for the organization of a small taxi fleet.

The taxi market has been developing rapidly in recent years. And, despite the fact that competition in this business segment is increasing, this business is a financially profitable project. The use of leasing schemes allows you to reduce investments, and the involvement of aggregators allows you to easily provide a taxi fleet with customers. You can enter such a business without experience and gradually increase the number of cars, constantly increasing your profits.

The current situation in the taxi market

The volume of the Russian taxi market is more than 500 billion rubles. Moscow is the leader in revenue of the taxi business with revenues of more than 2 billion rubles annually. This is almost half of the entire Russian market. In terms of federal districts, the clear leader is the Central District, which generates revenues of about 180 billion rubles a year. St. Petersburg is inferior to Moscow in terms of revenue, but in terms of the number of registered cars, these cities are almost equal - they have about 7.5 taxis per 1,000 inhabitants. Almost 600 thousand people across the country are employed in this industry. In connection with the crisis in the economy of the Russian Federation, an increase in the number of employees in this industry by more than 100 thousand people is predicted.

The share of illegal taxis in the market is about 15%, and this figure is constantly decreasing, which is associated with an improvement in the quality of transportation by large taxi companies and a decrease in the cost of a trip for customers. Major players in the taxi market are fighting for their client, for example, over the past few years, the average speed of a taxi has decreased from 10 minutes to 4-5 minutes. The average cost of a taxi ride over the past few years, according to market analysts, has decreased by about 35%. And this is despite a sharp rise in the price of all the main costs of transportation, such as the cost of cars, the cost of gasoline and spare parts. What made these savings possible? First of all, it is tougher competition among major market players. The cost of attracting a client has slightly decreased. But the bulk of the savings come from lower wage costs for drivers who have to work more for less.

The entire taxi market is divided into two large segments - taxi companies themselves and aggregators that do not have their own cars, but only search for and transfer customers to taxi companies.

Yandex.Taxi, Gett and Uber are leaders among aggregators in Russia. Among the taxi companies are Rutaxi, Saturn and Maxim, which are large federal networks.

Based on the results of the market analysis, we conclude that despite the growth in the number of cars and revenue, it makes no economic sense to create a separate taxi fleet with its own dispatch service. This is due to the almost complete market penetration by large players who can maintain huge advertising budgets and low travel costs. The market is so busy that investments in a small taxi fleet with its own dispatch service are possible only in very tiny settlements where there are no large players. And, if such places still remain, then this is not for long. In our opinion, such investments are not justified.

How can you make money on a taxi for a small taxi company

Due to the fact that the creation of its own dispatch service by a small company is currently not profitable, it is possible, having a car park, to connect to any aggregator and fulfill orders on its behalf.

The schema looks like this. You purchase several cars, hire drivers and enter into an agreement with one or more taxi aggregators. They will advertise, provide a dispatch service and provide you with customers at the rates approved by them. You will pay the aggregator for each client or for a certain period of cooperation with him.

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Aggregators work only with legal entities or individual entrepreneurs. As a rule, it is not profitable for a driver to open an IP for the implementation of a taxi transportation service in one car.

Exist two main schemes for working with drivers.

First scheme is based on the fact that you find a driver and agree with him on a certain plan, which he will hand over daily. Essentially, you are renting a car. As a rule, in order to avoid car downtime, two daily drivers work on one car. The cost of renting a car that you provide to the driver depends on the class of the car, its mileage and what fuel it runs on. Naturally, renting a car on gas is somewhat more expensive, as this is associated with a rather expensive re-equipment of the car, but the driver pays for the costs by reducing the cost of fuel. As a rule, the cost of such a rental for a driver per day for the regions is about 1300 - 2000 rubles per day.

Second scheme is based on the fact that you provide a car and pay the driver a salary for the number of hours worked. In this case, you also connect the driver to your aggregator account, refuel the car, wash it and service it. On the salary scheme in the regions, the driver earns from 1,500 to 2,500 rubles a day.

There is another scheme for working with a driver, when a taxi company attracts a driver with a car and takes a certain percentage of his revenue. Usually it is 4-6%. But such a scheme, probably in connection with the adoption of the law on the self-employed, will become unprofitable for drivers. Since the law has already been adopted in the first reading, it will not be long to wait and we will not consider this version of the work. Many companies that have worked on this principle are changing their business model.

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It is impossible to determine which scheme, the first or the second, is more profitable for the taxi company. As in any business, financial results mainly depend not on the model of its organization, but on the quality of business organization. Naturally, the salary model requires more attention to the business, more precise control over the work of the driver, but often extends the life of the car.

Naturally, car maintenance and repairs in both schemes described are carried out at your expense and under your control. Aggregators carry out full and strict quality control of order fulfillment. For any violations of the driver, he will be immediately fined or blocked. Often, aggregators also conduct driver training.

What cars are advisable to buy for a taxi fleet

Of course, the cheaper we buy a car, the faster it will pay off and start making money. However, cheap cars tend to have a smaller resource, which is very important for taxis, due to the fact that the cost of spare parts is constantly growing. The aggregators also issue the best orders, taking into account the class of the car and its mileage or age.

Therefore, it is necessary to find a middle ground that will save on initial costs and ensure sufficient cash income from this car. Consider which main car brands are profitable to use in a taxi.

Let us turn to the practice of existing taxi companies, which have not only calculated the effectiveness of acquiring a particular brand, but have also verified the correctness of their calculations in practice for years.

In 2017, more than 29 thousand cars were purchased by companies for use as taxis.

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Volkswagen Polo and Hyundai Solaris are in first place in terms of the number of cars purchased for taxis, their share is approximately 13% of all cars purchased for use in taxis.

The third and fourth places are occupied by Skoda Rapid and KIA Rio with 11% and 10.7% respectively. The top ten most popular cars purchased by legal entities for use as taxis also included: Skoda Octavia (6.4%), Ford Focus (6.1%), Renault Logan (5.6%), Volkswagen Jetta (2. 8%), Renault Kaptur (2.5%) and Nissan Almera (2.3%).

The main criteria for choosing a car for use in a taxi are its initial cost, fuel consumption, maintenance cost, convenience for the driver and the client. You can also consider purchasing a used car, but the cost of maintaining it is usually much higher, especially given the significant mileage when working in a taxi.

Legal aspects of the taxi fleet

To begin with, we will decide which organizational and legal form is better to use for a taxi fleet - an individual entrepreneur or an LLC. We are not talking about one car, which is operated by the driver himself, but about a taxi fleet, to which there are 10-15 cars.

There is no fundamental difference between IP and LLC for a taxi company. Making an IP is a little simpler, but not much. IP reporting is somewhat simpler, but keep in mind that an IP is liable for its obligations with all its property, and cases on the road are different and not all of them may fit into the amount of insurance. Therefore, if you do not have any special reasons for choosing an individual entrepreneur, we recommend opening an LLC.

It is more important to immediately decide on the choice of tax regime. Several tax regimes are available for taxis: UTII (single tax on imputed income), patent taxation system or simplified taxation system. Please note that UTII can be applied to individual entrepreneurs or legal entities that have no more than 20 vehicles for transportation.

It should be noted that the amount of taxes for each of the modes will be different depending on the region where the taxi company is registered. You can do it yourself on the website of the Federal Tax Service of Russia.

Let's calculate the cost of a patent for 10 cars for 2018 for a city, for example, Rostov-on-Don. The patent can be used by individual entrepreneurs, the average number of employees of which does not exceed for the tax period, for all types of entrepreneurial activities carried out by an individual entrepreneur, 15 people, which fits into our conditions.

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The application of the patent system of taxation provides for exemption from the obligation to pay personal income tax and personal property tax used for entrepreneurship.

Entering all the necessary data, we get that the amount of tax, when applying the patent system of taxation for this type of business activity for 12 months. will amount to 192,000 rubles, the tax is paid in two installments - 1 payment is equal to 64,000 rubles no later than ninety calendar days after the start of the patent, 2 payment is equal to 128,000 rubles no later than the expiration date of the patent.

We calculate the amount of UTII for the same conditions using a special calculator. The amount of UTII will be about 50 thousand rubles per quarter. The amount of UTII tax can be reduced to 50% of the amount of insurance premiums paid for individual entrepreneurs. Further, it all depends on what contributions you will pay for employees.

In our opinion, there will not be a big difference in the amount of tax paid in fact, when using UTII or a patent.

Thus, it is better to choose UTII or a patent as a taxation system, which is better, it is easy to calculate it yourself for your region, according to the scheme that we showed. If you do not fall under the specified regimes due to restrictions, then choose the USN.

Registration of a license for the activity of a taxi fleet

Consider what is needed to obtain a license to operate a taxi fleet. Obtaining a license does not present any particular problems. Licenses are issued by the Ministry of Transport. It is best to get acquainted with the list of documents for obtaining a license in the administration of the region where you will receive a license, since this list may vary slightly depending on the region of registration. The cost of obtaining a license varies depending on the region and is about 5 thousand rubles.

Please note that in order to obtain a license, you need to equip the car in compliance with the following requirements:

Permanent presence in the car of the original permit for this type of activity.

Checkered stickers.

The interior of the vehicle must be equipped with a taximeter device or a mobile application that replaces it.

The roof of the car must be equipped with a characteristic "taxi" sign with an integrated light element.

There are also the following basic requirements for the driver:

Driving experience of at least 5 years.

The vehicle must be in the personal ownership of the driver or provided to him in accordance with the current leasing agreement.

As you can see, the procedure for obtaining a license, as a rule, does not cause problems.

And, one more important legal aspect. Taxi drivers are required to undergo a pre-trip medical examination. Such examinations, by law, must be carried out by a certified specialist and the results of each examination must be recorded accordingly. To conduct such inspections, or record the fact of their conduct, you can conclude an agreement with a third-party organization that has a license for such activities.

Taxi fleet financial indicators

The financial performance of the taxi fleet will be different, depending on the operating model of the taxi fleet itself. Suppose we want to create a small fleet of 10 cars in a city with a population of about one million people. As a dispatch service, we will choose an aggregator, for example, Yandex.Taxi. Hired drivers will work in shifts and rent a plan of 1,700 rubles per day.

The professionalism of the drivers is very important for the financial success of the taxi company. If drivers often get into accidents or carelessly operate cars, then there can be no talk of any positive financial results. The right selection of drivers is the basis of a successful taxi business.

Let's consider what financial indicators in this example can be achieved by us.

The investment (initial) costs of opening a taxi depot will include the following main elements: the cost of opening a company or individual entrepreneur, the cost of obtaining a license, renting a parking lot, the cost of a small office and the cost of purchasing cars. The sum of the cost of purchasing cars is the bulk of all costs.

With an average cost of a car of 600 thousand rubles, the cost of 10 cars will be about 6 million rubles. These are significant investments, against their background, all the sum of all other initial costs can be neglected. You can reduce the amount of initial costs by acquiring a car on lease. For legal entities, there are many profitable leasing offers.

When concluding a leasing agreement, it is necessary to make an initial payment of about 10% -20%. The leasing agreement is concluded, as a rule, for a period of one to five years. The longer the lease term, the lower the monthly payment, but the greater the amount of overpayment for the entire term. Additionally, the lessee can get significant savings when paying the profit calculation. Also, the lessee saves on property tax and VAT, if he is its payer.

Specific amounts of tax savings depend on the taxation system you have chosen and can be calculated at any leasing company you contact. In any case, the option of purchasing cars on lease is worth considering, since you can reduce the amount of initial costs by almost 10 times.

Each car will bring you about 51 thousand rubles a month. But this amount is in the ideal case, in reality the amount will be 10% - 15% less, and this is subject to good organization of work. Let's take the net proceeds from one car in the amount of 45 thousand rubles per month.

The main expenses will be the following: the cost of purchasing an insurance policy, car maintenance, which, given the high mileage of cars in taxi mode, can be monthly, taxes, office maintenance, if necessary, and payment for aggregator services.

The total cost will be about 14 thousand per month per car. Thus, the expected profit from one car will be about 31 thousand rubles, and the total profit for 10 cars will be about 310 thousand rubles per month. In this calculation, we do not take into account some overpayment on leasing and consider that we make all investments at once. The payback period of the car will be about 2 years. In fact, the service life of a car in a taxi, subject to quality service, is much higher and is at least four years, after which it is more profitable to sell the car at the residual value.

It is not easy to maintain your own taxi fleet profitably, because the Yandex.Taxi service has appeared on this market for a long time and is developing and gaining momentum every day. This is due to the convenience for customers - the client himself, through the application, easily finds a free car at the right time at the right time, cashless payment, democratic pricing, as well as a fixed and known in advance cost of the trip, which excludes the possibility of "divorce" for money by dishonest taxi drivers. Competing with such a large service provider is difficult, especially in Moscow and big cities. Maybe it's better not to compete, but to cooperate?

As the service expands rapidly, it needs to attract new vehicles and drivers to cooperate. Therefore, now Yandex.Taxi offers its franchising to aspiring entrepreneurs, and anyone with a starting capital of about 3 million rubles can organize a business under a well-known profitable brand by participating in the My Taxi Fleet program. By the way, the amount of three million rubles is designated for those who came into business from scratch. Consider the mechanism of interaction, and the unconditional advantages of using such a franchise.

Why is it profitable to cooperate with Yandex.Taxi

The service provides each individual manager who advises on emerging issues, helps to draw up an individual business plan, and organizes simplified interaction with involved organizations;
for a novice owner of a taxi fleet, when applying to a leasing company, the support of such a large aggregator is invaluable, since often due to frequent bankruptcy in the second or third month of the business’s existence, they are often denied financing;
discounts on CASCO insurance up to 5.5%;
corporate personnel training, consultations on applied software products.

But at the same time, Yandex.Taxi declares that it does not act as a financial guarantor for entrepreneurs.

Opening your own car park

It all starts with filling out the personal data of the application on the site. Let's start with the conditions and requirements that Yandex imposes on potential partners:
ownership of 10 or more cars in good condition and ready to simultaneously enter the routes or start-up capital sufficient to rent or lease the required number of cars;
officially registered status of an individual entrepreneur or other form of legal entity;
license for this type of activity (transportation of passengers);
branding of cars for the period of cooperation in case of using discounts for CASCO.

Next, Yandex, having studied your profile, will contact you and offer to undergo training, followed by passing the exam and the final conclusion of a cooperation agreement with the provision of official software from Yandex.Taxometer and programs interacting with it, which will allow you to get started.

As you can see, there are not so many difficulties, but the advantages of cooperation are obvious. In addition to the advantages already described above that help to successfully start a business, it will be objective to list the technical advantages of the service regarding the transportation process itself:
decent driver compensation programs;
the software allows taking into account the individual characteristics of each taxi fleet and fulfilling orders of different priorities with price adjustments for the classes of vehicles in use;
the use of advanced robot - programs for intercepting applications, minimizing idle downtime;
a modern GPS-monitoring system protected from malware by the AntiFake application;
built-in program for settlements with customers and drivers.

These technical tools allow you to get the maximum profit due to the minimum downtime of cars in search of passengers, which are becoming more and more every day due to the customer focus of Yandex.Taxi. As a result, only an increase in profits is predicted, while private cab drivers will continue to search for a client at stations and airports, wasting time on this and trying to compensate for this by setting high tariffs. A single software objectively and evenly, depending on the number of cars, distributes applications between performers, which allows even a taxi fleet with a minimum number of cars not to feel disadvantaged in the market.

Analysts predict online that taxis have a great future, simply because it is convenient for the passenger and profitable for the carrier. There is an expansion of the geography of using Yandex.Taxi - the service is confidently going to the regions. Accordingly, cooperating with this company, it is quite possible to count on the success of your business and a quick return on considerable initial investments.

In such a large taxi service, competition among drivers and employers within the company certainly exists, and let's see if the driver has the right to choose a larger or more profitable taxi fleet and change his affiliation to it.

Driver transfer to another taxi fleet Yandex.Taxi

Sometimes the desire to change the fleet arises from the employee not only on the basis of the desire for better working conditions and pay, but, for example, when changing the place of residence. Cooperation with Yandex opens up a wide range of employers in several regions of the country, and there are no problems or prohibitions for drivers to change the taxi fleet. They also have the opportunity to work for more than one park, which will help them earn more. The transfer is carried out directly through the Yandex.Taximeter application, where all the service's fleets sorted by city and the necessary information about them are available - this is done quite simply and the complete procedure for transferring an employee will take no more than a few hours.

For those who wish, a brief instruction: in the personal account of the Yandex.Taximeter application, you need to enter the "Help" section, then select the "Account and payment" item from the "Profile" submenu, where we follow the path "Partners" - "Driver" - "Request to change partner", enter information about a new partner and send the form for approval.

In the conditions of a modern city, a decent income is a necessity, and there are working tools for this, a vivid example is Yandex.Taxi, which is ready to offer profitable cooperation options for both businessmen and drivers.

The taxi service business is one of the most profitable on the market, and proof of this is at least the fact that there are a lot of such services in any city. And if you know how to open a taxi that will not be afraid of competition, you can count on profit in the first months of work.

Where does taxi start?

Like many other types of business, the taxi service requires mandatory registration of the enterprise. It is a guarantee of its uninterrupted operation, as well as the safety of customers, so you should aim at least for an individual entrepreneur, but often an LLC or CJSC is registered in such a situation. True, in the latter case, you will have to have an authorized capital, pay more taxes and hire an accountant. If an entrepreneur wants to open a taxi from scratch at minimal cost, it is still better to stay with an individual entrepreneur.

After registration, it will be necessary to obtain a license for the transportation of passengers, and for this it is necessary to prepare cars and drivers in advance. Preparation requires:

• equipment of machines for working in the taxi service - they are equipped with "checkers", taximeters and lights
• selection of professional drivers who must pass a medical examination
• inspection of each machine - for this you need to conclude an agreement with a certain service station for scheduled maintenance
• selection of a parking lot - it should be a covered garage or a box with a compartment in which you can equip an office

To obtain a license, you must have at least two cars in the taxi company. If a businessman does not want to comply with these standards or cannot afford large expenses, he can open a taxi by hiring drivers with cars that meet these requirements. True, in this case, each driver needs to be helped to issue a license individually.

What can't be done without?

The taxi service is not only the cars themselves. No less important equipment is the radio station, through which dispatchers and taxi drivers will communicate. It is necessarily registered in the center of radio frequencies, after which the service receives its radio wave. In this case, it is better to immediately select three waves - for communication between the dispatcher and the driver, for communication between drivers and a backup one.

In addition to the station, you will also need to purchase walkie-talkies - they can be issued to employees for rent - for example, 15 rubles. per day for the use of the radio wave. This is normal practice for taxi companies.

And, of course, the main thing you need to open a taxi is the staff. The number of drivers in this situation should be equal to the number of cars in the taxi fleet, and the dispatchers will need to be taken care of separately. There may be few of them - usually 1-2 people. The more popular the service, the more dispatchers will be needed. To connect customers with them, you will need a multi-channel phone (perhaps several). If there are more than three lines, you will need to spend money on a mini-PBX.

And, of course, in order to open a taxi from scratch and succeed, you should take care of the name of the service in advance - it must be attractive to customers and relevant to the specifics of the work. True, in such a situation, you will have to pay extra for the trademark.

How much money will have to be invested?

When wondering how much it costs to open a taxi, an entrepreneur must immediately understand that this will not be the most budgetary type of business. The smallest expense item is the registration of an enterprise (you will need to spend up to 800 rubles, plus a license can cost 1200-1500). Where other purchases will cost more.

Here's what you need to open a taxi:

1. Radio station - 15 thousand rubles (this is the cheapest option, and it is still better to focus on good stations that cost more - from 40 thousand). Radio wave sublease will have a separate price - about 16-18 thousand rubles
2. Office software - 4-5 thousand rubles
3. Phone number - 2.5 thousand.
4. Equipment for one car - 2.2-2.3 thousand rubles (this price will include the cost of a taximeter - 2 thousand apiece, a walkie-talkie - 1 thousand rubles per unit, a checkered lantern - 200-300 rubles per one)

There can be 10 cars in the service, and this means that 22-23 thousand will need to be spent on equipment. The cars themselves can also have different prices, and it will also need to be included in the budget, but if a businessman decides to hire drivers with their own cars, these expenses can be saved.

Another 6-7 thousand will need to be paid for trademark registration if you want to open a taxi with a company logo and name.

There will also be monthly expenses:

• 10 thousand rubles - subscription fee for the use of radio frequency
• 1.2 thousand - utility bills
• 20 thousand (minimum) - wages for two operators

And, of course, here you also need to add the cost of renting a garage for cars and an office - prices may vary depending on the area where the service is located and the locality.

Regardless of how much it costs to open a taxi in a certain city, the profit from work will be about the same everywhere. The average income from one car per day is 2.5-3 thousand rubles, per month - 75-90 thousand (provided that the car is working seven days a week). A certain percentage of this amount remains for the driver - for example, 30%, the rest is the entrepreneur's net income. As a result, he will be able to reach full payback in the first six months of work, and if he had to open a taxi with the purchase of cars for service, in 1-2 years. This time will be enough for a good promotion of the company, and in a few months it will have regular customers, the number of which will increase along with the profit of the enterprise.