The Auro Group, which has more than 2,200 VTC (transport vehicle with driver) licenses in Spain, has definitively withdrawn the more than 1,000 that it offered with its company Cibeles on the Cabify mobility platform, an operation that it announced at the beginning of January and that means the latter company, a figure that Cabify now lowers to 20%. To the output of this thousand licenses must be added those of small and medium-sized fleets that disconnected their cars for weeks after denouncing “breach” by the platform and that now, weeks after the notification of breach of contract, are receiving burofax in which they are informed that they will be penalized if they do not operate with the company again. The sum of these two variables, as anticipated by elEconomista, would have led Cabify to lose around 50% of the licenses with which it operated in the capital in just over a month, although the company denies this point.
From now on, these 1,000 Grupo Auro VTC licenses offer their service on other platforms such as Uber Spain or Bolt, as explained by the company in a statement, in which it indicates that the disconnection from Cabify and the connection with its new partners It has occurred in less than 48 hours (between Thursday and Friday of last week). Cabify has already announced that it will request precautionary measures in this regard.
The thousand licenses of the Auro Group that have ceased to provide service in Cabify corresponded to its subsidiary Cibeles. According to the Auro Group, “everything possible” has been done to reach an agreement in light of the exclusivity demands that Cabify was asking for, but “unfortunately” it has not been achieved.
It should be remembered that last year an arbitration award agreed with Auro, through one of its companies, and declared the exclusivity clause that appeared in the service provision contracts between the two companies null and void. Faced with this situation, the company headed by Juan de Antonio appealed the award that agreed with Auro and this was annulled by the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) on the understanding that the Right of the Competition, prohibiting it from exploiting its VTC licenses on any technological intermediation platform other than Cabify.
Just a few days after this decision, Auro decided to unilaterally terminate its contracts with the application if an agreement was not reached beforehand. To do this, it was based on a change of control clause due to the recent departures of two company executives, Mariano Silveyra, the former vice president of Cabify, and Juan Ignacio García Braschi, former general director and CFO.
According to sources from the platform, Cabify is going to file precautionary measures in court so that its hitherto partner has to backtrack and respect the exclusivity agreement.
The group has another subsidiary, Auro, with another 1,200 VTC licences. In addition, in its conglomerate it has the company Closer Logistic, which provides last-mile parcel and delivery services to companies such as PC Componentes or Uber Eats: as well as its own mobility application called Auro and which is in service in Madrid, Barcelona , Malaga and Valencia.
With the departure of Cabify, the Auro Group ensures that it becomes the only large VTC fleet that operates on a multiplatform, something that – it specifies in the note – will continue in the future, since the company is committed to “the democratization of the sector, with the entry of players such as Uber Spain and Volt”.
After the disconnection of Cabify, more than 55% of the licenses of the Auro Group are already providing service on different platforms, the source has highlighted.
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