Seven years after its launch in France, Chauffeur Privé becomes Kapten. The name change reflects the company's desire to expand internationally, in addition to its presence in Paris, Lyon and Nice. "The Chauffeur Privé name had two limitations: its upmarket connotation and the difficulty for non-French speakers to pronounce it."explains Eve Arakelian, Kapten's Marketing Director. With this less Franco-French identity, Kapten will be able to go further in its European expansion. After Lisbon last September, the VTC platform will begin operations in Geneva in mid-February, before arriving in London next spring. Eventually, Kapten should be present in around fifteen major European cities. "Our name may be changing, but our strategy and corporate culture are staying the same. To continue our growth in France and Europe with Geneva then Londonthis name change is necessary"said Yan Hascoet, co-founder of Chauffeur Privé and CEO of Kapten.
This change of scale has been in the pipeline since December 2017when German manufacturer Daimler took a majority stake in the start-up founded in 2012 by Yan Hascoët, Othmane Bouhlal and Omar Benmoussa. Since then, Daimler has entered into a joint venture with BMW, which was finalised at the end of January, to jointly develop mobility services ranging from car-sharing with Car2Go and DriveNow to digital mobility solutions with moovel and ReachNow, car parks, recharging stations and, of course, ride hailing, i.e. everything to do with taxis and VTCs.
In addition to Kapten, the joint venture has other subsidiaries such as mytaxi and Clever Taxi in Europe and Beat in South America, representing a total of 250,000 drivers for almost 16 million customers. While in the short term the various entities will live their lives separately and continue to develop their expertise, consolidation is not ruled out in the longer term. The stated aim of Daimler and BMW is to be, in five years' time number one in Europe and one of the world's top five taxi and VTC solutions, alongside Uber and Lyft.
As far as Kapten is concerned, the start-up plans to reach 10 million users by 2020. Its international expansion will in particular enable it to strengthen its business offer which has already won over 2,000 companies, accounting for a quarter of sales. To extend the appeal of its solution to CAC 40 companies and SMEs, a few weeks ago Kapten signed an agreement with a number of French companies. its integration with SAP Concur. The benefits of Kapten's business offer include ordering for guests from the website or app, simplified payment with pro-goals paid for using the company's bank card, centralised expense reports and detailed shopping reports.
