The ride-sharing platform Juno, which has a development team of 80 people in Minsk, Belarus, gained the first million rides in New York. Juno is a new startup from Viber founders - Igor Magazinik and Talmon Marco - and it promises to compete with a super successful American ride-sharing service Uber.
The service started to collaborate with drivers in New York in December, 2015. The closed testing was launched two months later, in February, 2016, but it was impossible to book a car at that time. In May Juno launched Invite Only campaign, but now the service is available in beta-testing mode to everybody. To become a passenger of Juno in New York and get a 25% discount you need to download the application from App Store or Google Play.
According to Juno’s CEO Talmon Marco, 13,000 drivers have already signed with the company (there were 7,500 of them in May). Juno users make 100,000 rides per week, which is really impressive for the application that has been working for four months only.
Marco says they are making an ethical, socially responsible ride-sharing service. Unlike Uber, Juno will take only a 10% commission per ride from drivers. But the main difference of Juno from other ride-sharing services is the respectful attitude to drivers. which will make them more motivated and nicer to passengers. In July the company issued 25 million restricted stocks for 9,000 qualified drivers. Eventually, the drivers will get 1 billion founding shares which will make up half of the company’s value.
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