Menevä – an exceptional growth story

Vinka and Menevä have worked closely together for several years in a successful, mutually beneficial partnership. What lies at the core of that collaboration?

Fast, profitable growth

Menevä's growth story is exceptional in the Finnish taxi market. In a short time its business has multiplied, and its fleet has grown from dozens of vehicles to thousands.

Menevä's brand is built around good customer service and responsibility. In business, Menevä can be summed up in one word: bold. It has not been afraid to take on challenges bigger than itself, and the workload that comes with them. Menevä's strategy has been to win new business through public tenders and, on the back of that success, build a broader business. A key reason for its success is strong cost competitiveness, which Menevä has built through, among other things, smart technology choices.

Competitiveness through technology

What sets Menevä apart from competitors is its ability to deliver service more efficiently while looking after drivers' earnings and a high standard of customer service. As a result, drivers are doing better than before, while the total cost of producing the service has fallen.

Menevä's operating environment ranges from the long distances of Lapland to the congestion of the Helsinki region. It runs very different kinds of taxi services: alongside regular consumer rides, Menevä works in areas such as healthcare transport and goods delivery.

Menevä is a long-standing Vinka partner. Vinka's role is to create the conditions for the most efficient possible operation of very different services in changing circumstances.

The efficiency of Vinka's platform is based on its ability to build an extremely precise digital picture of the operation. Where a traditional taxi system sees the situation as a snapshot in time – cars are either free or busy – Vinka's picture is "three-dimensional". The platform knows where cars are heading and when they will be available. This means jobs can be allocated to cars before their previous task ends, and their future location can be used to find the optimal solution.

On top of this situational picture sits a very versatile toolkit, which lets operators focus optimisation on what matters most to the customer. In Lapland, for example, after long trips of up to 450 kilometres it is important to find return trips that bring cars back to their home areas, whereas in Helsinki the aim is to build seamless chains from one trip to the next. This ensures there are enough vehicles even at times of high demand.

The results have been significant: in Lapland, for example, Menevä was able to run the same trips, without compromising service quality, with a fleet 33% smaller than its competitor's.

The platform as an enabler

Vinka's starting point is that technology should support and enable a business, not force it into a particular mould or, at worst, get in its way. Vinka's platform makes it possible to build entirely new business models alongside traditional taxi operations, for example shared rides or scheduled route services.

Vinka helps its partners punch above their weight.

Menevä is a Finnish transport and taxi company offering taxi services across Finland. Menevä operates as a dispatch service that connects customers with taxi entrepreneurs, providing taxi services for passenger transport, businesses and the public sector, among others.

Menevä is one of the largest taxi dispatch companies in Finland, and its operations cover several cities and regions. Menevä is known in particular for working with many independent taxi entrepreneurs and giving them a platform to reach customers. More information: www.meneva.fi.