How UBERization of Technology can raise a quality of providing service

Last two weeks Mike has been traveling to Yerevan, Armenia. 

First of all, Mike would like to share some historical and tech industry related information about Armenia as a brand maker.

For those who have never heard about Armenia (it's AR-ME-NIA, not Romania, not Albania, it's ARMENIA) - it is a mountainous landlocked country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia with own huge cultural and historical heritage. Also, Armenia is a first country in the world who adopted Christianity as a state religion in 301.

As from product/brand creating perspective you probably know a lot of Armenians by origin, but more famously as representatives of other countries, like:

1. Andre Agassi - Tennis player (USA)

2. Garry Kasparov - Chess Player (Russia)

3. Charles Aznavour - Singer (France)

4. Alexis Ohanian - Entrepreneur (USA) 

In a few words it's a really interesting country that's full of discovered and undiscovered (yet) talents and amazing people.

As a part of a tech world (small yet, but still growing) Armenia is involved in tech with startups as well as tech leaders (Cisco, Oracle, VMware, Microsoft)

Mike was amazed by startup guys, who passionately promote their own ideas and beliefs.They try to make positive changes or as someone said about Alexis Ohanian, "Make the world a bit less suck."

There are several very successful startups like: 

Teamable.me - Next Generation recruitment platform, using B2B SaaS model, and

PicsArt.com - Last Year was named as an official partner of Google, during the Google IO 2015

There are more, but Mike will inform you about them next time, so be patient and you will get a cookie :)

A particular startup Mike wants to share about is called ggTaxi, which is an Armenian based startup, that's doing doing pretty much like Uber, but with taking into consideration national, cultural and economical aspects. If Uber is giving a chance to everyone to make extra money by driving their own vehicles, ggTaxi is using service of professional taxi drivers, who want to join the company in order to drive a cab under an umbrella of the company.

And here ggTaxi is solving more important problems than just giving an ability to drive and earn money:
1. ggTaxi is creating a competition among taxi drivers, who are forced to constantly improve the quality of the provided service. (clean cabs, faster services, no noisy music, etc)
And it's not about the price, because ggTaxi has the same prices as any other cab in Yerevan and generally, it's cheap.

2. Second, ggTaxi is against tips, which became an integrated part of our society in USA. It's ridiculous when you see on your bill options to tip 12% 15% or 18%. Why? why? why? Tips should be my natural will for good service, not an obligatory part. Back to ggTaxi driver insisted to give back 300 Armenian drams, which is less than dollar. Still money for Armenian reality but another perception of mindset change.

3. Last, but not least, ggTaxi has direct line of customer support, and they are glad to hear your concerns,  feedback and improvement requests.


In other words startup is a social influencer.

Teamable.me next time...