{"id":342280,"date":"2017-05-31T01:09:05","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T17:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1497044"},"modified":"2017-05-31T01:09:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T17:09:05","slug":"how-uber-is-growth-hacking-in-spain-despite-regulatory-roadblocks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/how-uber-is-growth-hacking-in-spain-despite-regulatory-roadblocks\/","title":{"rendered":"How Uber is growth hacking in Spain despite regulatory roadblocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Taxi drivers in Spain are protesting against\u00a0ride-hailing apps\u00a0Uber and Cabify\u00a0today, holding\u00a0strikes<\/a>\u00a0in multiple cities and a protest march in the capital. Early reports<\/a> suggest 20,000 protestors took to the streets in Madrid.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, both\u00a0companies are continuing to recruit drivers \u2014 using another Spanish startup, Jobandtalent<\/a>, to help them do so. For example, the below ad running on Facebook in\u00a0Barcelona says the recruitment firm is looking for 140 private drivers in the city\u00a0this month, with applications for the roles ending on June 2.<\/p>\n

And while the ad does not specifically mention Uber or Cabify both firms are using this route to help staff out their platforms, according to the recruitment firm running the campaign.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The two\u00a0on-demand apps only offer private hire vehicles with professional drivers in the Spanish market. That\u2019s been Madrid-based Cabify\u2019s model all along, which has generally focused on the corporate market rather than actively trying to\u00a0compete with taxis at street level; while Uber reversed course after a successful legal challenge by local taxi associations in 2014, going on to relaunch in Madrid in 2016 offering only\u00a0licensed driver Uber services .<\/p>\n

City regulators in Spain do\u00a0cap the number of private driver licenses available \u2014 the regulated ratio is supposed to be one private hire vehicle per 30 taxis. But the number of licenses\u00a0available has been increased\u00a0in recent months, according to\u00a0Jobandtalent co-founder\u00a0Juan Urdiales.<\/p>\n

This follows moves by the\u00a0National Markets and Competition Commission to encourage\u00a0a relaxing of licensing rules \u2014 which in turn has triggered protests from the taxi industry<\/a> over what they perceive as unfair competition and changing regulatory winds.<\/p>\n

Urdiales says local rules\u00a0allow for two drivers to be staffed per private driver license on average, while licenses are typically tied to companies rather than individuals \u2014 thereby allowing Uber and Cabify to be\u00a0able to recruit more drivers (via these\u00a0third party license holders), and for recruitment ads such as the one pictured above to signify growth, not merely driver churn on their platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose companies work in exclusivity for Uber or for Cabify,\u201d he says\u00a0of the clients Jobandtalent is running the ads for.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are growing a lot at the moment,\u201d he adds, noting also that Jobandtalent is, in turn, the only company working with the\u00a0third parties that are providing Uber and Cabify with drivers \u201cstaffed on-demand\u201d.<\/p>\n

Part of Jobandtalent\u2019s\u00a0business\u00a0pivot last year<\/a>\u00a0was to switch focus from enterprise recruitment to mobilizing hiring for SMEs with faster staff turnover needs \u2014 meaning it started\u00a0competing directly with recruitment agencies\u00a0like\u00a0Adecco. But the\u00a0pivot also evidently positioned it\u00a0to align\u00a0with\u00a0the hiring needs of gig economy platforms like Uber thirsty for enough staff\u00a0to power their own growth.<\/p>\n

Urdiales says it\u2019s\u00a0now \u201cacting as an on-demand staffing marketplace\u201d for its clients, managing everything from recruitment to payroll to\u00a0payments of the workers \u2014 and describing it as\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cfull transactional marketplace\u201d at this point.<\/p>\n

In the case of Uber and Cabify using\u00a0third parties in Spain to grow the number of drivers available for\u00a0their respective businesses, he says: \u201cThe way that it works is that [third party private driver companies]\u00a0come to us asking for 140 drivers and they get those drivers from us in 2-3\u00a0days prepared to work (the candidates sign their contract into our app and we manage all the paperwork).\u201d<\/p>\n

For Jobandtalent, Urdiales reckons there\u2019s\u00a0\u201chuge potential\u201d in\u00a0the gig economy to feed growth of what is ostensibly a\u00a0SMEs-focused recruitment platform at this point, telling TechCrunch: \u201cWe are seeing a huge potential in the gig economy with this type of clients and we are getting a lot of traction with companies like Cabify, Glovo, Delivery Mates, JustEat, some Amazon suppliers, etc.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraditional players like Adecco or Manpower can\u2019t serve their demand as they are not used to their pace (they are too slow and not digital), and job boards are not efficient enough for them because they require a lot of internal effort, they really need a special platform for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The startup, which raised a $42M Series B round<\/a> last summer\u00a0led by Skype founder Niklas Zennstr\u00f6m\u2019s VC firm Atomico, is also claiming there are\u00a0signs that\u00a0gig economy-style hiring is now making waves\u00a0in\u00a0corporate recruitment\u00a0too.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are also seeing a big trend in the corporate world with more traditional companies starting to move to a more flexible workforce and applying some of those gig\/on-demand principles,\u201d he says, adding:\u00a0\u201cWe have started to work with companies such as Santander or France Telecom to manage their temporary staff and we see that this is something that has just started.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, if all goes to plan, Jobandtalent\u2019s\u00a0pivot might actually end up coming full circle \u2014 returning it to the business of enterprise recruitment via the fractured lens of gig economy flexibility.<\/p>\n

Depending, of course, on how the regulatory winds blow.<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Carl Court\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Taxi drivers in Spain are protesting against ride-hailing apps Uber and Cabify today, holding strikes in multiple cities and a protest march in the capital. Early reports suggest 20,000 protestors took to the streets in Madrid. Meanwhile, both companies are continuing to recruit drivers — using another Spanish startup, Jobandtalent, to help them do so. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-342280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}