The agreement is aimed at uniting the efforts of the service and regional authorities for the further legalization of the taxi market. The service intends to maintain the high quality, availability and safety of the taxi service, participate in the discussion of draft industry regulations, and propose measures to encourage carriers to comply with the legislation on taxi transportation. The Department, for its part, declared its readiness to take into account the expert opinion of the largest market participant, to create conditions so that it would be profitable for carriers to obtain permission to operate a taxi and work legally.

The parties began preparing the agreement after a working meeting between the Deputy Director of the Department, Evgeny Dmitriev, and the heads of the largest taxi services, which took place in March 2016.

Maxim Shusharin, director of the MAXIM taxi service:

We are interested in cooperation only with legal carriers and do everything within our powers to increase their number. Residents of the city see how many cars with checkers and branding of our service are on the streets. But the efforts of one company are not enough. Much depends on the legal framework, conditions for entrepreneurship. Therefore, we need joint actions with the authorities, effective decisions that can only be made in the dialogue between government and business. I note that over the past 2 years, all our proposals and joint discussions with the authorities have resulted in concrete decisions. The order and mechanism of what is written in the regulatory framework has been reworked into quite comfortable conditions. In the Kurgan region, the cost of obtaining a permit is affordable, there are certain preferences for persons who have received permits, and most importantly, this is the opportunity to conduct a constructive dialogue with the authorities. The region managed to avoid ill-conceived decisions to establish a single color scheme for taxis, raids on taxi drivers and other negative things. We will soon be signing similar agreements in Moscow and Khabarovsk.

Alexander Konstantinov, Director of the Department of Industry, Transport, Communications and Energy of the Kurgan Region:

The interaction between the executive authority and the largest market operator will help create conditions for the legalization, improvement of the quality and safety of transportation. By signing the agreement, we would like to put things in order. First of all, this is the issuance of orders only to those carriers who have permission to operate a taxi. Those who carry passengers should root for their business and consider it their profession, and not a part-time job for half an hour. We are now faced with an additional task - to organize a network of stops for legal taxis in order to "block the road" to illegal immigrants. Specially created working groups have already outlined the first points - these are the airport and the railway station. All structures, including city ones, understand the need for this step. Taxi is the face of the city. We expect that other taxi services, following the example of the MAXIM service, will also begin to legalize transportation.

https://www.site/2017-02-21/sozdatel_taksi_maxim_startoval_na_samodelnom_vezdehode_k_ledovitomu_okeanu

“We are not suicidal! We are building a car that will reach"

The creator of the taxi "Maxim" started on a homemade all-terrain vehicle to the Arctic Ocean

Born at the very beginning of the 2000s in Kurgan, the Maxim taxi service is now one of the largest companies in this market in Russia. But its founder Maxim Belonogov, who started his business selling essays, is now passionate about a new ambitious project. For the second year, with the help of Aleksey Makarov, an all-terrain vehicle builder from Yekaterinburg, he has been persistently building a car on the outskirts of Uralmash that can reach the North Pole. The name of this all-terrain vehicle is Burlak. In March 2016, the Ural designers tested the first prototype, driving it from Ivdel along the Ural Mountains to the Kara Sea. Today they have already loaded "Burlak-2" onto the trailer, intending to repeat the route. If everything goes well and the modified car shows itself in the right way, then by next year Belonogov and his comrades will build another Burlak and go to the North Pole in two cars at once ..

- What is your goal now?

- This is an expedition, a dash test car. Last year we built the first Burlak, took it to the Kara Sea, Baidaratskaya Bay and tested it. Let's just say that I liked the car in some ways, but I didn't like it in some ways.

- As far as I remember, there were some remarks to her.

- There were comments. We sold it entirely and built a fundamentally new car. Not new in appearance - they changed, let's say, the layout. In the first "Burlak" the engine was in the back, now in the front ...

Why did you take such a step?

- We changed the weight distribution and redid all the decisions on the transmission. We greatly lightened the car, this one is lighter by about a ton of the first option. Changed final drives.

— What was wrong with the first Burlak?

- First of all, it was necessary to change the weight distribution of the car and load its face. The first option was hard going through deep snow and uphill. We then expected that the weight of the engine would be compensated by the crew that would be in front. But if you continue to make a car, so to speak, for the national economy, all the same, the main load and, accordingly, the weight will be at the back. Now we will test whether it has become worse or better.

- I see you have also made another propeller for moving on water.

— This screw goes up. On the last car there was a goryushko with a screw. Especially when the car fell through the ice. We then removed it and repaired it. Now cuts are made of metal, and there will be no such problems.

- The first Burlak had an engine from Toyota Surf, and now?

- Now also from Toyota Surf, only from a new car. Just then there was a 1KZ engine, diesel, 145 horses. Now 1KD, also diesel. The block [of cylinders] is the same there, but this one is more modern and produces 170 “horses”. Torque is also higher here, fuel efficiency is better. Yes, 1KD is more difficult to maintain, but our task is to make the engine go to the North Plus - 4-5 thousand km - and return the car back. Therefore, we believe that it is quite suitable.

The Ural enterprise at the expense of the state fund will produce tires for all-terrain vehicles

- How much did the construction of the modernized Burlak cost you?

- A little cheaper than the first one. The first, together with the cost of a test run, came out to about 12 million rubles. Now it is cheaper, because some of the costs that we incurred when we built the first Burlak were no longer there. For example, at that time, molds for casting wheels cost us 4 million rubles. Now they are already there. Accordingly, the costs are only for the manufacture of the wheel itself.

- Is the wheel expensive?

- About 50 thousand rubles apiece.

- Who casts them?

- China agreed. If we then make 100 such machines, then the production of the mold will probably pay off.

- What does the second "Burlak" from the domestic, so to speak?

- Almost everything. Racks at the Yekaterinburg Aggregate Plant were made to order. Reducers from armored personnel carriers, but they also made cases for them themselves. The axles have gears from Toyota, but the cases are handmade. The body of the car was made by hand. In Kurgan, they made a transfer case for taking power to the propeller. There is such a microfactory, they make gears and gearboxes for the military. On the previous Burlak, gears were made in Tolyatti. What is called, they collected from all over the forest. They just bought a ready-made shovel (laughs and points to the Fiskars bayonet shovel attached to the back). The picks to break the ice were even made from long products themselves.

Alexey Makarov in "Burlak"

- The secret, to whom was the first Burlak sold?

- Bought guys from Latvia. We met them during the first test run in 2016 on the road from Inta to Vorkuta (Komi Republic). They are professional travelers, they have quite strong sponsors: Garmin, Norfin (the first is a manufacturer of navigation equipment, the second is clothing for extreme conditions - ed.). The geography of travel among the guys is constantly expanding and has now expanded to our North. They thought that they were riding in prepared jeeps and would calmly reach the Baidaratskaya Bay. But it turned out that everything was a little different. We met them when they stood on the winter road in the line and waited for them to clear the way with tractors. We drove past them, and then they called and asked for our all-terrain vehicle.

- How much did you pay?

He didn't redeem himself. We gave it away at the cost of components - about 7 million rubles. For their tasks, that machine was sufficient, and we explained all the details to them. This allowed us to build a second machine of a fundamentally different design. Before the sale, by the way, we also redid something in the first Burlak: racks, cooling radiators, pipes.

— This year, how many cars will go on a test run?

- Last year, Burlak and Makar were used - these are Andrey Makarov's previous developments. This year there are "Burlak-2" and "Emelya". Machines of the latter type have already been to the North Pole twice. Specifically, the one that comes with us was once. She came from us under her own power through the North Pole to Canada and in a circle through Alaska returned to her homeland. It was made by Vasily Elagin, co-organizer of the Marine Polar Expedition.

Is this the Yelagin whose experience actually inspired Makarov to make his Arctic all-terrain vehicle?

I don't know if they inspired each other or not. Elagin was the first, and when he was building his car, Alexey had not planned to do it yet. But they have known each other for a long time and communicated closely.

- Good. What route will you take this time?

“Now we are finishing loading the equipment onto the trailer and going to Ivdel. I think we'll be there in the evening. From there, follow the old route on your own. Through the Dyatlov Pass, we will pass near Narodnaya and further to Baydaratskaya Bay. We did not change the route, because we remember how the first Burlak behaved last year, and now it is important for us to understand how the new one behaves. The path is beaten, it is important to understand what has changed in the behavior of the car. Plus, compare with how the Emelya rides. If Burlak turns out to be worse, we will generally decide whether it is worth going to the North Pole in this car or whether we need to refine it again. By the way, Burlak and Yemelya have a fundamentally different form factor: different crew habitats, different wheels. "Emelya" is a highly specialized vehicle designed to pass to the North Pole. "Burlak", as we plan, can be converted to the needs of the national economy.

- In 2016, you announced plans to go to the North Pole this year.

We have changed the design. Of course, I understand that this smacks of endless modernization. On the other hand, we are not suicidal. Our task is to build a car that will get there, not a car that will have to be abandoned in the ice. The plans remain the same, everything just shifts another year ahead. Provided that the new version will show itself well.

- Why do you need all this?

- It doesn't matter how many days are in our lives, it is important how much life is in our days.

05:08 First money and work as a corpse truck

08:00 Paging and the foundation of the future business

11:33 The place where it all began

17:00 Access to other cities

20:17 Creating your own unique car

25:42 Offers from competitors

Video: RBC

The round orphan Maxim Belonogov failed with the paging business, but created a taxi aggregator. The turnover of his company "Maxim" exceeds 5 billion rubles, more than 500 thousand taxi drivers cooperate with it throughout Russia, Iran and Italy

Video gallery

“I never worked for someone, I always undertook,” says Maxim Belonogov, co-founder of the Maxim taxi aggregator. As a high school student, he resold newspapers and worked part-time on a "body truck" in a special team at the emergency hospital, which took away the bodies of the dead. Employees periodically went on a binge, and the student replaced them.

At the age of 16, Maxim's mother died, and he was left an orphan. I bought a Pentium computer and a printer with the survivor's allowance. Together with a classmate and future partner Oleg Shlepanov, he downloaded abstracts in Fidonet, printed them out and sold them to students. Then he traded telephones and gas equipment for cars, worked as a loader. At 22, the entrepreneur got married, had a daughter, and had to feed his family.

Maxim Belonogov created his first serious business in Shadrinsk, a small town 140 km from Kurgan. But not on the first, but on the second attempt, he says in an interview with RBC. First, the entrepreneur, together with Oleg Shlepanov, rented an office, installed a transmitter, acquired a franchise from Mobil Telecom and began paging. This business died quickly and unexpectedly when cell phone operators entered the mobile market. At that time, eight operators worked for Belonogov, and he decided to organize a taxi service. I took a radio station and an antenna from a taxi driver friend, installed the equipment and tried to find taxi drivers. Entrepreneurs rented a multichannel phone number - during rush hour they could be reached by phone, but not always to competitors. “The drivers themselves began to pull themselves up, because they knew that they would have a job,” recalls Belonogov.

One of the largest Russian online services for ordering a taxi "Maxim" has started working in Indonesia. In the new market, the company is betting on motorcycle taxis: motorcycles account for 75% of all transportation in the country. Indonesia is a convenient market for expansion, experts say, there are many Russian tourists already familiar with the brand.

Taxi service "Maxim" began to work in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, a representative of the company told Kommersant. City residents can order taxis and motorcycles from service partners - taxi companies and individual carriers - in the application and on the website. The difference between the service in Indonesia was the introduction of the "Motorcycle" tariff. In the country, motorcycles account for 75% of traffic, this is the easiest and fastest way to get from point A to point B, especially in metropolitan areas, the company says. According to Maxim's regional development director Alexei Markin, this is the first such experience among the ten countries where the service operates.

Indonesia is one of the largest countries in the world in terms of population: more than 9 million people live in Jakarta alone, and more than 260 million in the whole country. “Internet and mobile services are developed here, people actively use applications, including ordering transport. This is a huge market, - explain the logic of expansion in Maxim. - The climate allows residents not to spend money on cars, but to travel on motorcycles and mopeds, public transport is poorly developed. Plus, motorcycles solve the problem of traffic jams and are especially relevant in megacities.”

The Maxim service was founded in 2003 by Maxim Belonogov. According to its own data, the company is owned by Mr. Belonogov and his partner Oleg Shlepanov (both have 50% each). The service is present in 275 cities of Russia and more than 340 cities of the world, the annual turnover in 2016 is 6 billion rubles. In addition to the home market, "Maxim" operates in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Italy, Kyrgyzstan. Preparations are also underway for a launch in Chile, the company said. In addition, the service plans to expand to other markets in Europe, Asia, the Middle and Far East, and South America.

The amount of investment in the Indonesian market, where a number of taxi aggregators already operate, is not disclosed in Maxim. “The experience of working in Jakarta will help to better understand the needs of the Indonesian market and optimize the service. Soon it is planned to start work in other cities of the country,” says a service representative. At the launch stage, "Maxim" will not charge a commission from partners, but "as the position in the market strengthens," the conditions will be revised, the company specifies. Now the average size of the service commission is 10%, in different cities its size is different. We are talking about a resort popular among Russians who have a well-known brand, says Alexander Merzlikin, founder of the Guru.Taxi marketplace. “Perhaps, after a successful pilot, we will see Maxim on motorcycles in Russian cities,” he admits.

Other Russian online services for ordering a taxi are also actively entering foreign markets. Thus, Yandex.Taxi is already operating in neighboring countries - Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Estonia, as well as in Serbia, and the Siberian aggregator inDriver, which has only recently entered the Moscow market, in May 2018, as Kommersant reported, began international expansion from Mexico.

Roman Rozhkov

Yandex.Taxi and Uber switched to a single IT platform

conjuncture

The united company Yandex.Taxi and Uber has completed the transfer of drivers in all cities of Russia to a single platform for working with orders, the company told Kommersant. The last cities were Moscow and St. Petersburg. Thanks to this, drivers will be able to receive orders from users of both Uber and Yandex.Taxi. “There will be more cars available for call, and they will arrive at customers faster, and drivers will have less idle mileage. This will increase the reliability and quality of service in general,” the company expects. The unified platform operates on the basis of the Taximeter driver application developed by Yandex. It includes a navigator, maps and a directory of organizations.

Maxim Belonogov is hard to surprise. Working in regions with taxi drivers is not for the faint of heart. Google and Yandex, at the request of Taxi Maxim, issue criminal reports: an office was set on fire in Abakan, a car was burned to the head of a department in Nizhny Tagil, a driver strangled a passenger in Omsk, and a passenger strangled the driver in Tambov. The founder of the taxi service "Maxim" is pragmatic about everything - firstly, this is Russia, and secondly, "the main thing is to start, everything else will depend on stubbornness, and we are very stubborn."

Here is the number 1 taxi service in Russia. Maxim receives 15 times more orders per day than Yandex.Taxi (one million per day versus 60,000). Belonogov's company started in Kurgan and now operates in 89 Russian cities. Its closest competitor, Rutaxi, the application of the Lucky and Leader services, operates in 82 cities. Competitors, officials and lobbyists accuse Maxim of all mortal sins (comment to Secret: “You are promoting the largest organizer of illegal smuggling in Russia!”). Belonogov, on the other hand, opens new branches - and since 2014 he has gone beyond the borders of the country.

The entrepreneur did not give interviews, but his business has become too big to be ignored. According to our calculations, the company's turnover is at least 10 million rubles a day. "The Secret" tells the story of the taxi "Maxim" and its founder.

Start

It's hard to believe that this guy in a baseball cap, jeans and a plaid shirt has almost 4,000 people working for him. "Maxim" has the same number of employees as the city-forming enterprise of Kurgan - a plant that produces infantry fighting vehicles. If we add drivers who are currently roaming the streets of different settlements to the staff of Maxim, we get a small city comparable to the same Kurgan (about 300,000 people). It took the founders a little more than ten years to create this microcosm.

Belonogov began working in high school - before the elections, acquaintances offered to go from door to door and campaign for the Liberal Democratic Party. The matter is not dusty, but it requires perseverance - in the nineties, unexpected knocks on the door were more wary than now. With the proceeds, Maxim bought LM cigarettes. His classmates envied him.

An acquaintance of Belonogov worked in a special team at the emergency hospital. The brigade took away the bodies of the dead after the doctors ascertained their death. “The corpse trucks drank mercilessly, and my friend’s partner often didn’t show up for work,” Maxim recalls. Once a partner got drunk, and a friend brought Maxim to the director and asked him to register a 15-year-old teenager as a new assistant.

Maxim could not officially work, but he could receive tips. Belonogov says that this is the main income of corpse carriers - when a relative dies of a person, he gives money to a specialist so that he can take the body calmly, carefully, as if it matters. There were few work shifts, but there were still enough for the LM.

In the spring of 1996, when Belonogov was taking training exams before entering Kurgan University, a misfortune happened - his mother died on the day of the first exam in Russian. His father died earlier, when he was nine. They were left alone with their older brother, who also suffered from lack of money.

Belonogov bought a Pentium 100 computer and a printer for the survivor's allowance. With fellow student Oleg Shlepanov (later became a partner at Maxim), they downloaded essays in Fidonet, printed them out and sold them. At the same time, they traded in gas equipment for cars and popular radio telephones with a Rus caller ID.

In the second year, Belonogov had a daughter, but money was still not enough. One of the main dishes in the family was potatoes with mayonnaise. But the partners got their first hired employee - a disabled grandfather agreed to be a dispatcher. He skillfully persuaded people to buy new devices wholesale and retail. The scheme was as follows: to determine which phone the customer needs, and quickly reset the delivery address to the students on the pager. Maxim and Oleg sat in pairs at the university and usually someone raised their hand, asked for time off to go to the toilet, got into the car and delivered the order. The trunk was full of phones.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the business collapsed - retailers of the Eldorado level came to Kurgan. It became clear that it would be difficult to compete. The partners themselves were pretty tired of being resellers - they studied at the Faculty of Technology Automation, wrote programs and wanted to create something important, and not work as couriers.

An acquaintance of Belonogov, who worked in a paging company, offered to open a similar business. The short but colorful era of the pager was in full swing. In Shadrinsk - 140 km from Kurgan, 80,000 inhabitants - there was no paging company. True, as soon as the partners decided to open under the franchise of the Moscow Mobile Telecom, the peculiarities of the Russian business appeared in all their glory - competitors instantly appeared. I had to negotiate: Belonogov promised them to set up a paging company in Kamensk-Uralsky (175,000 inhabitants) and take it as a share.

While dealing with this project, the paging era was over. As Belonogov recalls, the guys got angry - “Oh, you pig, spent our money,” but they could not do anything. At that time, the entrepreneur rarely appeared at home, and one day, after a month's absence, the four-year-old daughter did not recognize him and turned to "you" instead of "dad". Since then, he did not leave the family for a long time.

Taxi

The paging business wasn't all that profitable. In just one month, the paging company's revenue was enough to cover office rent and staff salaries. When cell phones forced pagers out of the market, eight operators were already working in shifts for Belonogov. Then the partners decided to make a taxi service.

The calculation was this: people who have money buy cars and look askance at public transport in the future. At the same time, people in Russia drink a lot, which means that the taxi service will be in demand. The companions found an Alan 100 radio station from a friend in Kurgan, dragged it to Shadrinsk, put it on the roof of a five-story building, and rented an office on the first floor.

Back then, a taxi ride was expensive. “Taxi drivers rented a room in a private house, sat in a circle, drank tea and answered the calls themselves in turn,” recalls Belonogov. - I offered them my pricing policy. He offered to put a radio station in the car. They sent me three letters." Belonogov understood that in order for the service to become mass, prices must be significantly reduced.

In 2003, elections to the City Duma were held in Shadrinsk, Maxim oversaw the campaign of the odious millionaire Pavel Fedulev. The millionaire won, however, then went to prison for 20 years for a series of contract killings. In this story, it is important that Maxim earned money for a used “nine” during the campaign. Even after the elections, ownerless advertising billboards remained - the entrepreneur pasted an advertisement for a new taxi on them.

Partners made an announcement: drivers with a personal car are required. Taxi drivers were recruited mostly from retired military men. It became clear that it was possible to earn money on a cab, but for this it was necessary to go beyond the borders of Shadrinsk.

Photo: Alexander Alpatkin/Sekret Firmy

In the spring of 2004, the partners "began to play taxi" in Kurgan. In Shadrinsk, the service was called "Shadrinsk", but here a problem arose - the taxi "Kurgan" already existed. One evening, the businessmen were drinking beer at the editorial office of the Nezhnyye Vesti newspaper, where Belonogov's childhood friend, designer Mitya Skokov, and editor Yevgeny Kataytsev (now the head of Belonogov's Bunker advertising agency) worked. The guys thought for a long time what to call a taxi in Kurgan, and finally someone suggested "Maxim" - there is such a men's magazine, there are cigarettes, it is easy to remember, it rhymes with "taxi". Skokov quickly drew a logo with red checkers. When the sixth branch opened, Shadrinsk was renamed Maxim.

The cable was stretched from Oleg's apartment to the neighboring basement to save money on installing a telephone, and a radio station was connected. The dispatcher and the taxi driver communicated by radio. It worked like accounting in the era before 1C - the numbers were written down in a notebook. All orders were memorized, travel time was calculated by eye.

A software solution was required. Through Fidonet, the partners found a programmer who worked at Sberbank and was looking for space for creativity. “Money was ridiculous for him, but he decided to practice what would come of it,” Belonogov grins.

Friends in Kurgan began to tell each other about the Maxim taxi, and after three months the company reached the bar of 100 orders a day. A commercial was played on the radio: a bitchy female voice said: “Taxi Maxim is known to everyone: 41-07-07.”

Expansion

At this time, taxis appeared in different regions, which worked according to a scheme similar to Maxim. Taxi companies with their own cars gradually died. They lacked flexibility - maintaining a large park ate too much money. “Let's say the weather is good now and no one needs cars in taxi companies,” Belonogov explains. “And if it rains, they will be needed - and they may not be enough.” This seasonal factor and periods of peak demand are difficult to account for.

In Krasnodar, there was a taxi "Saturn", uniting drivers and taxi companies under a single dispatcher. Maxim and Oleg went to visit to learn from experience - at that time, Saturn opened 17 branches in villages with a population of 30,000–40,000 people.

They returned inspired and decided to go to Tyumen, where there are twice as many inhabitants as in Kurgan. For the first six months, Tyumen brought in more money than Kurgan and Shadrinsk combined (partners do not disclose specific figures). “It became a shame that they lost so much time while they were afraid to get out of their shell,” Belonogov sighs.

Inspired by success, the partners decided to double their turnover and go to Chelyabinsk. The logic was this: 80,000 live in Shadrinsk, 300,000 live in Kurgan, 600,000 live in Tyumen, and 1.2 million people live in Chelyabinsk. There, "Maxim" applied a scheme of decentralized management - they did not transfer the entire office, but put the director in place. Orders were taken by the control room in Kurgan. If before that the company kept drivers on staff, in Chelyabinsk it began to work as an order service, transferring orders to third-party drivers.

Photo: Alexander Alpatkin/Sekret Firmy

This approach did not justify itself - either a failed director was hired, or word of mouth did not work in million-plus cities (or worked differently). It became clear: it would not be possible to take large cities in a hurry, a plan was needed. For two years, the partners did not open new branches, they developed a strategy.

Anton Klementyev, the CEO of the Maxim taxi, recalls the turning point: “We are going somewhere and discussing what to do next. There was a phrase - you need to leave the walkie-talkies and develop applications. In 2007, the first application for taxi drivers appeared - for phones with a resolution of 120 by 300 pixels, in Java. Then came the client application. In fact, almost no one used it.

A year later, the crisis struck. Residents of Kurgan, who bought cars on credit, taxed to recoup the costs - this helped the development of the service. The term "loan car" appeared. “I got the impression that one half of the city is thumping, the other carries it, and then they change,” Belonogov comments.

In 2009 Maxim opened a branch in Moscow. It took six years to bring it to payback.

Competitors and claims

“We are gathering the protest electorate. There are always graters,” says Belonogov about the drivers who work with his service. As soon as partners enter the region, drivers evaluate the new conditions and often start working with them. Traditional taxi companies remain dissatisfied.

In March, Amur region companies wrote a letter to Putin to prevent the spread of "illegal business" in the region. Local taxis do not withstand price dumping and give up their licenses. Vladislav Demidov, the owner of the Online taxi in the Amur region, believes: “The secret of Maxim is that they set prices that are generally unacceptable for transportation, and they don’t know what an accident of personal cars is, a doctor and a mechanic, fines from regulatory authorities and etc".

This, in general, is true - "Maxim" considers itself an IT company, and really does not worry about accidents or technical inspections, believing that their expertise is software and communications.

The service met with resistance in other cities as well. Belonogov is ready to tell such stories for a long time.

One of them - how they set fire to the office in Angarsk - is more like a joke: “The director from Angarsk calls the IT specialist, says that the switchboard burned down. The IT specialist thinks who he is in order to determine that "Tsiska" burned down. He says: how did you diagnose that she burned out? Maybe she's fine? The director sends a charred switch to the MMS for this - decide for yourself whether it burned down or not.

Partners laugh. The following dialogue occurs.

Shlepanov ( lively): “They also burned a car in Tagil.”

Belonogov ( surprised): "Yes? Already burned? We recently opened in Tagil.”

Shlepanov: “Our banner was also painted over there.”

Belonogov: “Oh, they smeared it with shit? Well, it's a normal process.

The hardest thing for ordering services is to strike a balance between a price that is low enough for the user and a price that taxi drivers are still willing to work at. “I think we developed only due to the fact that we tried to maintain the minimum price of the trip,” says Belonogov.

"Maxim" takes a commission of 10% for its services, the average check for a trip is 100 rubles. For comparison: GetTaxi takes 15%, in Moscow the average check is 400-500 rubles. A regional taxi can make a good profit only on volume. This Maxim does well. According to Sekret's calculations, the company's daily revenue reaches 10 million rubles.

According to Belonogov, Yandex went to Maxim with an offer - he offered Moscow in exchange for Russia. The partners looked at their volume and refused. "Yandex" confirmed to "Secret" the fact of negotiations.

Yandex.Taxi and GetTaxi only work with taxi companies. "Maxim", like Uber, with which the authorities of Europe and America are fighting because of illegal transportation, is with private drivers. “This is the difficulty in the regions. There are not so many taxi companies that are able to keep the brand, ”they say in Yandex. In addition, "prices in the regions are extremely low as a result of the dumping of illegal immigrants on substandard cars." Belonogov assures that it is impossible to work with one taxi fleet in the regions.

The main claim against taxi services like Maxim, Leader and Saturn is that they are not responsible for transportation. “These dispatching offices conclude contracts with drivers as individual entrepreneurs, in fact shifting all responsibility for transportation to them. As a result, the risks are on the side of drivers, who are also pressed by low tariffs. And all this before the first problematic case, an accident or being late for the airport. Drivers often do not realize this themselves,” says Andriy Azarov, founder of the Aerotaxi service.

Besides, "Maxim" is accused of weak check of drivers. Aleksey, a driver from Angarsk, says that the taxi does not check the drivers, “so that he is not a drug addict and has not been in a psychiatric dispensary.” Belonogov admits that it is difficult to control taxi drivers: “The driver comes, we look at the form in which he brought himself, we examine his car.” But the murders of taxi drivers occur much more often than the murders of passengers. The company learns about this from the police and helps them investigate. “Since he is driving, he is at least sober,” Maxim explains. Some drivers deliberately taxi until eight in the evening, and then wake up early in the morning when orders from drunken passengers dry up.

Uber, the largest global taxi service, is facing similar allegations. In September 2014, a court in Frankfurt am Main banned an app of the same name that linked passengers to unlicensed drivers. Uber, like Maxim, is accused of neglecting customer safety. When a Delhi driver was accused of raping a passenger, a wave of protests against Uber swept across India. The company's app was banned in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, the state of Nevada and other countries, the company is challenging the decisions of the courts.

The only precedent when the court did not work in favor of "Maxim" happened in Belgorod. The service was deemed "creating a risk of future harm." The Department of Automobile Roads and Transport of the Belgorod Region demanded that drivers be banned from working with Maxim, because the service did not have the right to provide taxi services, there were no necessary documents for transportation. The telecom operator "MTel" turned off the beautiful number 77-77-77, and the advertisement of "Maxim" was banned in the city.

“In Belgorod, I don’t communicate with anyone, I don’t have personal graters. Local - matchmaker, brother, godfather - everyone knows each other. Apparently, everything is arranged there in such a way that you need to give a share, ”says Belonogov. “When we arrived at the trial, they told us so - are you not afraid to come here? The principled position there is not to let anyone into the city under any pretext.”

According to Belonogov, a similar fate has already overtaken their main competitor in Belgorod, Take a Taxi, who left the city. Representatives of "Taxi" refused to comment on the "Secret". Now the phone number in the city is disabled, there is a ban on advertising, but people continue to order a taxi through the application.

He is not going to leave Kurgan. In addition to taxis, the entrepreneur owns a small Slavyanka confectionery factory, a Go! Touristic, the flight center "Lalogovushka" (a social project for the development of aviation in the region), the advertising agency "Bunker" - he acquired or opened all this with the income from a taxi.

In 2005, Belonogov wanted to run for the City Duma. He honestly admits: he wanted to buy a room that was rented from the administration of Kurgan, there was no money for the purchase, and the deputy could help. Then Belonogov lost the elections and now says that he is "not interested in politics at all." By the way, all three offices of the company in the city are owned by him.

“Bit by bit, we are collecting the whole Kurgan, many of those who are something of themselves and for some reason have not left yet, work here,” says Belonogov. Employees are paid three meals a day so that nothing distracts them from work.

"Where to go? - Belonogov approaches the wall with a map of the world. - Here. Now we are looking for ourselves, as we were looking for when we opened branches in Russia.” In 2014, the company launched 22 divisions, including in Kazakhstan and Georgia. An office in Bulgaria will open soon.

“Maxim” planned to make good money in Ukraine, but political events spoiled the business plan: “Tanks were parked near our office in Mariupol. We maintain branches, people get paid, there is devastation, what a taxi in figs, they have nothing to eat.

The taxi market is being redistributed all over the world. Authorities pass laws governing the operation of ordering services. Uber, which is valued at $40 billion, has already been banned from operating in Germany, France, Thailand and other countries. So far, Belonogov manages to grow in spite of the enemies, and he is not going to retreat. He is very stubborn - this is what helped him survive in a permanent struggle with circumstances.

Cover photo: Alexander Alpatkin/Secret Firmy