The Ukrainian online taxi service Uklon notes a gradual recovery in traffic by the end of 2022 and conservatively lays this level into plans for 2023, Serhiy Smus, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and co-founder of the Uklon service, has said.

"If we compare the situation in October to October last year, then we have a 5% lag compared to 2021. But such a resumption of service was gradual: from minus 70-80% in March to minus 5% now. My forecast is that this indicator hardly has a chance to reach 0% by the end of the year," Smus said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

According to him, given the high growth rates in the pre-war January-February of this year, compared to January-February 2021, a slight increase may be recorded for this year as a whole.

He said that due to the war, the service stopped working in Mariupol, after the liberation of Kherson, it quickly resumed work there, and also added Kamianets-Podilsky to the network this year.

"[Next year] we planned very conservatively: to reach at least the same indicators as they were in the plans for this year. That is, without any growth. It's hard to plan. If earlier we could plan for two or three years and make adjustments every three months, now we adjust sometimes once a month, and sometimes even once a week," the COO said.

According to him, the number of orders in the country's western cities has grown, "but this is more of an organic growth." The co-founder of Uklon said that when in Kyiv in March the drop in trips was 70-80%, then in Lviv it was 30%, and in April there was already an increase compared to the invasion. At the same time, he noted, today Kyiv remains the No. 1 city in terms of both the average check and profitability for business.

According to Smus, the most important factor that affects the activity of people's lives is the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For example, in October in Kharkiv, after the liberation of the region in the previous month, the number of trips made increased immediately by 22%.

Among the negative factors, the COO named communication problems during outages. He said that on November 23, during the first blackout of the Ukrainian power system, in the afternoon (from 16:00) there was a decrease in the number of trips up to 40% compared to the same time period of the previous day.

Commenting on the tariffs, Smus said that their growth this year is small and significantly inferior to inflation.

"Currently, the dynamics of growth in orders is significantly inferior to the growth of active drivers. This is due to the fact that many have lost their jobs. Someone has come from the regions. And this has additionally affected the tariffs," he said.

According to the co-founder of Uklon, in the summer, if to talk about the whole of Ukraine, the price increased by an average of only 3%, and in the autumn there was a slight decrease in the price.

Smus also said that the company has again begun to consider the possibility of entering foreign markets, although in the current conditions it will be difficult to do so.

"To launch a new market, one needs to leave the country to at least do some of your own analysis. We already had a superficial analysis of the two countries, but to finally decide where and on what model to launch, we need to organize the arrival of the marketing team there, product team," he said, pointing out to one of the difficulties.