Israeli taxis in Jerusalem. Photo: Yoninah via Wikicommons.

CTech – Yaniv Alfi, the general manager of Yango Israel, has decided to resign from his position at the company, according to one person familiar with the matter who spoke to Calcalist on condition of anonymity. In December, Calcalist reported that one year after launching its taxi-hailing app in Israel, there were rumors Russian Nasdaq-listed company Yandex was dissatisfied with the local subsidiary’s performance.

Following a request for comment, both Alfi and Yango confirmed the resignation but denied it was due to dissatisfaction. Alfi will remain with the company for three extra months as a business adviser to “help with handing over the tasks,” Aram Sargsyan, general manager EMEA and CIS at Yango/Yandex.Taxi told Calcalist in an email.

Yango launched in Israel in December 2018 with the clear objective of competing with local market leader, Israeli taxi-hailing company Gett. Despite courting thousands of drivers and attempting to compete via an aggressive marketing campaign and a new way of working with drivers, to date the company has not succeeded in dethroning Gett. Recently, Yango has started making inroads into the enterprise market.

“I hate doing announcements like this, but I have to announce that Yaniv Alfi, our regional manager, has decided to leave the company and switch to other projects,” Sargsyan said. “In no way his decision made me happy — we have a really fruitful collaboration. Together with Yaniv we have launched Yango in Israel in December 2018, and thanks to his efforts we quickly turned into one of the key players of this market in Israel. During these 1.5 years we have expanded our coverage to new cities, started providing B2B services, and made tons of improvements and innovations that help us provide a better experience to both drivers and users.”

Alfi told Calcalist that following 18 great months at Yango, during which he had managed to turn the company into a significant player in the local taxi market, he has decided to continue onto other challenges. “I personally thank Aram, Yango, and Yandex for the great chance and I’m sure they will keep on succeeding.”