Brazilian Startup JaUbra Goes Where Uber Drivers Panic

As soon as word got out that JaUbra entered the neighborhoods of winding streets without numbers, da Silva noticed that the majority of his clients were residents who called him to take them to the doctor, the fresh food market, or to bailes funk (Brazilian funk parties) over the weekend.

As the business grew, da Silva started to bring in other drivers in the area to help meet demand.

“There are places here that are difficult for public transport to access and that has made us the only option for many people who were missing doctor appointments,” says da Silva’s daughter, Aline Landim, who gave up a bank job to dedicate herself full-time to JaUbra.

Seeing the startup’s potential, Landim invested the payout she got from her former employer into JaUbra, which her father was running out of a garage while recording bookings on pieces of paper.

Now they have their own app and are on the verge of migrating to a more sophisticated platform which 500 drivers have already expressed interest in joining.

“People think that to start out you have to have a lot of money, but we started with nothing,” says Landim, 29, sitting in JaUbra’s new location, a modest office they rented with the R$ 32,000 (US$ 8,300) they received from the local government and an additional R$ 20,000 they got from an investor.

“We only had a computer, a telephone, the idea, the creativity, and the physical space loaned by a friend,” she says. Despite making three thousand trips a month and taking 15 percent commission on each journey, JaUbra’s earnings are just enough to keep the family-run business afloat, says Landim, whose brother is also involved.

Nobody Hassles You

Running a transport app on the outskirts of a city where high crime and inequality go hand in hand is not easy. Life expectancy can be as low as 23 years old in certain neighborhoods, according to a recent study. And Vila Brasilândia was ranked São Paulo’s third most violent district.

Yet JaUbra has not recorded a single assault in the past year. “Since I joined the app, I haven’t even suffered a scratch,” says Nelson Cobertino, who started driving for JaUbra last year.

“When people see the (JaUbra) sticker they know we’re from the neighborhood, so nobody hassles you because they know you are meeting a need and they respect that,” says Cobertino, who used to drive for Uber and work in a bank.

Uber admits to blocking requests from certain areas at specific times of the day for security reasons. Recently, they announced plans for a pilot program in Heliópolis, a favela in the South zone of São Paulo, with designated pickup spots to increase its presence in the city’s neglected outskirts.

The US app also offers tailored service in Brazil for customers with old smartphones and slow internet connections as well as for those who prefer to share their trip to save money.But da Silva is not scared by the competition.

“At the beginning, everyone thought that we wouldn’t do it, that we would have to stop,” he says. “But two years later, we’re still here. I’m going to leave my family a legacy.”