Juan de Antonio grew up in La Velilla, a small town of 200 inhabitants located in the municipality of Pedraza, Segovia. As a child, he was interested in how things worked. That’s why he studied telecommunications engineering because he thought that communications moved the world.
While studying, he combined his studies with some work, such as handing out pizzas or working in a bar. In 2002, after finishing his degree in Telecommunications at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Juan de Antonio began working as an engineer, a profession that he abandoned after a few months when he realized that companies are generating them work. For this reason, Juan de Antonio began working at the strategic consulting firm The Boston Consulting Group, where from 2004 to 2007, he learned the business. He then emigrated to Asia, where he lived in Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore before going to the United States to do an MBA with a Fullbright scholarship.
Upon returning to Spain, Juan de Antonio set himself the challenge of making cities more livable. Juan de Antonio’s first idea was to bring the Zero Motorcycle electric vehicles to Europe. However, he soon realized that this process would take a few years and that there was an opportunity to attack the problem from another angle: offering passengers to buy kilometers instead of purchasing the vehicle. This is how Cabify emerged in Madrid in 2011.
The name of Cabify comes from a pun in English: “Cab” (taxi) and the suffix -ify in English, which means “transform.” The idea of this company is to transform any vehicle into a cab. With Cabify, the user can control the location at any time through the mobile, and the payment, which is made by credit card or Paypal, is counted per route, regardless of traffic and without making any transaction with the driver, which is included in the rent.
In 2017, the Cabify workforce grew 32.8 percent worldwide. Also, it employs 1,800 people globally, of which 350 employees are in Spain and have an average age of 31 years. In the last year of 2017, the app exceeded 70 million euros in turnover.
Currently, Cabify is part of Maxi Mobility, a holding company of leading brands in the mobility sector, including Cabify and Easy, which was born with the vision of improving the quality of life of the inhabitants, offering integrated mobility options.
In Spain, the company has had difficulties in its growth due to the regulatory framework. He has also had conflicts with members of the Spanish political party “Podemos,” who accuse the company of tax evasion.
