Episode 18 - BTSE 2021 - Matteo De Renzi - Gett

Sure. Gett is a global ground transportation management company. We started in Israel as a taxi company back in 2011 and then expanded in the UK, Russia later on. We now specialize in corporate transport, so we connect fleets all over the world to corporate travelers with our unique technology and platform. The beauty of our solution is that it combines all the different types of ground transportation services into one. We have taxis, we have chauffeurs, we have limos, we have ride hailing all over the globe. The benefit for the customer is that they have everything in one place, a safe environment, they save money. The benefit for our partner fleets is that they get additional work that otherwise they wouldn't have access to. So it's really a win-win marketplace.

Yeah, I think the last year and a half has taught us many things. One of them is clearly taking care of people. It's a very common trend for our corporate customers. One of them, to be honest, is safety. I think in the last few months, few quarters, we realized how fragile we are as a mankind, as an ecosystem, as a fabric of society. Ground transportation safety is a key element. So we see several trends happening in the industry. People are traveling less to the offices or to meetings, but when they travel to the office or to meetings, they tend to prefer a safer option, which often is a car, traditionally not shared anymore in these days. And interestingly, with all the different disruptions happening for weather or other issues all over the world, there is a new wave of it becoming more and more important to be sure that you really care where your people are, in which vehicle they are, to be sure that the driver is a safe driver. So it's almost a new way of doing corporate travel, very much focused on that. And then of course sustainability, a very obvious word.

Yeah, so let me answer your first question or first point. Yes, I think there is a lot of value in aggregating fleets, drivers, sources of supply, or partners as we call them. Corporate travelers have very different needs, and corporates have very different needs. Sometimes they need and want to go for the cheapest available option, in other instances they need a more high-end type of service, and it changes all the time, by company, by travel circumstance, time of day, type of meeting. The variety is immense, and that's the problem we solve. We put all that complexity away because we funnel all of that fragmentation into one single place where customers have choice. When you have choice, you have better chances to make the right choice, and data off the back of it. On the second point, the role of ground transportation, you're right. We also see the first and last mile of a journey becoming more and more important. Sometimes I say ground transportation can be almost a parenthesis of a full journey. This puts a lot of pressure on us because you need to be right from the very beginning and deliver a great experience at the end. It's definitely more and more important, and our cities are more and more disrupted. Traffic, new regulation, a general scarcity of solutions in some areas. So it's becoming increasingly more difficult to deliver that first and last mile. If that first and last mile doesn't go well, it makes or breaks the journey. I have been there many times when the car doesn't show up on time or I get out of the airport and it's not there, tired and wanting to get home to the family. I 100% agree with you. In a situation like we have today in ground transportation with a lot of fragmentation, there is one magic word: resilience. We need to create a system which is resilient, and that's what we do. It's essentially removing the friction from this whole space.

There is big demand. And the nice thing is that technology is scaling up very, very quickly across the full stack of the value chain. Drivers have better technology in their hands, fleets have better technologies, we have better technology, aggregators have better technology. Ultimately, this means far better user experience for the customer, even more choice, and efficiency across the whole value chain, which ultimately is very good for the customer.

That's a fantastic question. You might be surprised, but even largest corporates often have a so-called unmanaged spend in excess of 50%. Why? Because today it's very easy to book a taxi and then expense it back. This has generated an additional level of fragmentation also on the demand side. I think there is a big opportunity here, not only from a cost standpoint because if you consolidate everything in one place you have visibility and can control, but going back to the point we said before about safety. If you have someone riding in India taking the first car they find on the road and expensing it back, the issue is not really the expense, the issue is the potential risk to an asset to a business in terms of human resource, not from a CFO standpoint but from an actual delivery standpoint. So there is big value in bringing that. It's amazing how companies have a very strong grip on flights, hotels, room bookings, and all that part of travel management, and very little on ground transportation.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes we find ourselves in an uncomfortable conversation with the travel manager who says, 'This is what I'm spending,' and then we have to go back to them in a few weeks and say, 'I'm sorry, but you're actually spending three or four times more than what you think.' But the good news is that we can do something with it. So that alone is a massive plus for any corporate to at least embrace the fact that there is an opportunity there.

Thank you for having me.