We were founded in 2011 with a clear mission – to make cities better places to live. Today, ten years have passed in which we have managed to enter the streets of more than 40 cities in Spain and Latin America, all thanks to a team of passion and commitment. It’s also fair to say that these ten years have given us a lot, and we have a few anecdotes and a multitude of memories that bring a smile to our faces.
We started out as an app that connected passengers with drivers, but over the years, cities and people’s needs have changed significantly. We’ve also evolved alongside them, and we have worked hard to respond to each of the challenges that have arisen along the way. At Cabify, we firmly believe that in order to improve urban spaces it’s important to take on the role of agents of change.
Today, we can say that we are continuing to work to improve cities with the same enthusiasm and excitement as we had on day one, although, from time to time, we like to take a moment to remember those milestones that bring back such good memories. We were founded in Madrid in 2011 and, a year later, we were the first app in our sector that dared to “cross the pond” and transport our business to Mexico, Peru and Chile. It goes without saying that we remember it as a real adventure.
Touring cities, listening to users and, above all, to the planet, made us realise other priorities beyond our business expansion aims. The importance of integrating sustainability as one of the key pillars in our business model to reduce the impact of our activity.
In 2017, the good news kept coming, and it was a real high point to discover that we had become the first Spanish unicorn. An honour to share the naming of one of the most spectacular mythological creatures. In addition, that same year we started working together with Easy Taxi, the largest taxi travel app in Latin America, and with them we became one of the first apps to connect users with collaborating drivers and also with taxi drivers in an integrated way.
For us, 2018 was also a big year, as we wanted to go one step further in terms of sustainability and joined the Spanish Network of the United Nations Global Compact, and we made a unique environmental commitment in our sector: we became the first carbon neutral mobility app in Europe and Latin America by offsetting 100% of our travel footprint. Through this programme, whose traceability we ensure through blockchain technology, we have invested in reforestation and renewable energy projects in the countries where we operate.
In this four-year-period (2018-2021) we have offset more than 375,000 tonnes of CO2, or the equivalent of what was absorbed by 21 million trees in their first 10 years of life.
Since then, we have not stopped working to reduce our impact and, in 2019, by combining technology and mobility, we are integrating micromobility services into our application by making electric motorbikes and scooters available to users in Spain. But sustainability is something much more extensive and we understand that it must also be geared towards citizens. In this sense, we’re continuing to work in order to be a more universal application and in 2019 we also became a 100% accessible service for blind people. Today, we are very happy to be able to help more than 70,000 users who are benefiting from the accessibility options of our app.
The global pandemic in 2020 was a historic event that brought urban mobility in cities to a halt. However, at Cabify we continued to work to benefit society, using technology as a vehicle to be a more efficient, safe and sustainable multi-mobility ecosystem. This commitment has enabled us to remain more united than ever, despite the physical distance, and to keep those who were at the forefront of the battle in motion, as well as to deliver, together with NGOs and civil organisations, support, tools and hope where it was most needed.
Undoubtedly, these have been ten years filled with emotions and, if we look back, we can say that we have learned a lot, have allowed us to evolve and have given us the opportunity to transform ourselves to continue to meet the needs of our community. Today, We are a multi-mobility platform that is committed to being a key alternative to the excessive and inefficient use of the private car, and we continue to work with the same enthusiasm to reimagine cities and offer people mobility they can believe in.
