Learn more about 5+ years of successful cooperation.

History

inDriver was first launched in the Russian city of Yakutsk (the coldest city in the world). In 2012, during the New Year holidays, the temperature dropped below -45°C, and local taxi companies decided to raise their fares by 50%. Obviously, it didn’t meet any positive reception from the public. Local students were outraged and created a community called ‘Independent drivers’ in the popular Russian social network VK. The community members published the route and the fare they were willing to pay for the trip. The drivers contacted the customers and fulfilled the orders. In just six months, 60,000 members joined the community, and it continued to grow every day. So there was inDriver, which had been standing against the market domination of local taxi companies from day one.

Nowadays inDriver is a mobile application that offers an alternative to conventional taxi services. Users set the trip fares themselves and choose a car. At the moment, the service operates in 33 countries and 450+ cities. It is actively used by 80+ million passengers and drivers, which makes the service Top 6 in the Maps and Navigation category in Google Play (Pic. 1) and Top 9 in the App Store (Pic. 2) in the world. Moreover, inDriver has recently marked 1billion rides.

Pic. 1

Pic. 2

Goal

Until 2016, the main goal was to transform the VK community into a fully functional mobile app, and further expand the company into the region. The app was frequently updated to meet all the needs of its users. Moreover, a significant amount of organic traffic was driven to the app thanks to its growing popularity among the local communities and word of mouth.  Also, the internal media buying team was purchasing traffic from myTarget, Facebook, and Google AdWords sources.

As a result, the project began to develop rapidly. inDriver decided to come to new regions and countries. So there was a need to search for new traffic volumes. The inDriver team decided to reach out to Zorka.Agency. The client was looking for a team of experts who would ensure an increase in paid traffic to their mobile app

Solution

The inDriver expansion strategy was rather unconventional. Unlike their competitors, the team targeted smaller regional cities first. Having gained enough market share, they continued to expand to bigger cities. Some would say that this approach resembles the inductive method of reasoning.

We did not launch campaigns in large cities, as almost all competitive taxi services did. Moscow or St. Petersburg, for example, — is a very competitive GEO, where the CPI rate is quite high, and the audience is already jaded. Therefore, starting from other cities, we understood that Moscow residents travel a lot around the country or even come from the regions, — says Julustan Matveev, VP of Digital inDriver.

Some regional cities of Russia and Kazakhstan were chosen for initial expansion. Facebook Ads, Google Ads (including Display & Video 360), and myTarget were the most popular traffic sources in this GEO. Other traffic sources were not considered at the first stage, as they raised doubts about the quality of traffic. inDriver always focused on their internal analytics to minimize any chance of getting fraudulent traffic in the course of their performance campaigns.

The following KPIs were set: CPI rate was $2.4 for the test drive of the selected GEO. CR (registration) – 70%.

As a result, in the period from March to June, we were able to acquire 122,484 users for inDriver, and 91.3% of them made at least one in-app purchase. Although the CPI rate, in the end, turned out to be relatively high, in terms of ROI the investment paid off in full.

Now

inDriver and Zorka.Agency have been working together for about 5 years. Together we entered the markets of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, increased the audience in Russia, and approved creative concepts. Over the years of cooperation, inDriver has repeatedly changed its positioning in the market, based on the creative strategy at the time. The client carefully monitors the brand image and their reputation, and meticulously checks all advertising materials. Together, we have tested more than 5 000 messages for ad banners. Then we moved to video ads. Our in-house production team shot creative videos for native ads.
In 2020 alone, we purchased 477,100 installs with an average CPI $3. 402,404 users registered with the service and made a total of 628,479 trips.

We continue our successful cooperation, discover new countries and new sources, test new hypotheses, and make videos. We are extremely proud of the results we have achieved together.

Are you a promising startup looking for a way to grow into an international business? Get inspired by the inDriver case and let us help you make that happen. Zorka.Scale – we help startups scale rapidly!