On Oct. 11, the number of taxi and delivery orders placed through inDrive in Kazakhstan nearly tripled amid a major outage affecting Yandex Go. To handle the surge in demand and curb rising fares, inDrive lowered its commission and stepped up efforts to recruit new drivers, according to Arsen Tomsky, inDrive’s founder and CEO.
Writing on Threads, Tomsky said demand surged on Sunday morning. Within just a few hours, users placed nearly three times as many orders as usual. Due to a shortage of available vehicles, fares rose noticeably in some areas.
In response, inDrive lowered its driver commission, which Tomsky described as already the lowest on the market. The service then received tens of thousands of applications from prospective drivers, and many were approved. Fares began to decline within a few hours.
However, the situation remains intense, with fares in certain locations, including airports, staying higher than usual.
According to Tomsky, passengers and drivers negotiate fares on inDrive. When demand surges and available vehicles become scarce, both parties tend to propose higher prices.
To curb further trip cost increases, the company continued recruiting drivers and introduced additional limits on the price range passengers and drivers could negotiate.
«Our key priority right now is ensuring that people in Kazakhstan can easily get where they need to go and receive their deliveries. People are traveling to work, to visit family, to hospitals and to attend to their daily affairs. We want to ensure no one is forced to change their plans due to a shortage of cars or high prices,» Tomsky wrote, encouraging users to share their experiences with the service.
What happened to taxi fares?
The sudden influx of passengers to inDrive followed a major outage affecting Yandex Go in Kazakhstan. On Oct. 11, users reported difficulties booking taxis and ordering food and goods.
Meanwhile, Kazakhstanis complained about rising inDrive fares. Some Threads users reported that rides on their usual routes cost nearly three times as much as normal.
Yandex Go confirmed the technical issues and said its specialists were working to restore the affected services.
In 2022, several months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, inDrive relocated its headquarters and hundreds of employees from Yakutsk, Russia, to Almaty, Kazakhstan.
In December 2023, Tomsky, whose wealth is estimated at $865 million, announced that he had obtained Kazakhstani citizenship at the invitation of the country’s government.