How urban digitalization is changing people’s daily lives, the role of artificial intelligence and local partnerships in the development of urban infrastructure, and Yango Group’s strategy in global and regional markets — Daniil Shuleyko, CEO of Yango Group, shares his perspective on how technology is shaping the future of cities and businesses around the world.

– Yango Group, the parent company of Yango Azerbaijan, currently operates in various regions worldwide – from the Middle East to Africa and Latin America. Looking at the company from the outside, what is it really: a service, a platform, or something more?

– That’s an interesting question. I’d like to give a detailed answer, but to be honest, it’s quite simple: we are building a platform that enables the digitalization of cities.

It’s important to understand that Yango Group today is no longer just a ride-hailing service. It is a technology company headquartered in Dubai that brings together more than 10 services and businesses across different sectors. By digitizing urban services that people use every day — taxis, parcel delivery, and food delivery — we are building the digital foundation of a modern city.

We operate in over 35 countries, growing actively in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, and we’ve also started expanding into Latin America. However, our company isn’t about countries — it’s about cities. Sometimes entering a new city within an existing country is harder than entering a new market altogether.

This is because we digitize everyday urban life, moving it from the physical world into a digital environment. Our goal is to make life more comfortable, predictable, and convenient. That’s what we focus on every day.

–The term "ecosystem" is used by almost every tech company today. In your case, it seems more like digital urban infrastructure. How does this approach differ?

– The term itself sounds grand, but in practice we try to keep it simple: we focus on the digitalization of the city. That describes what we do quite clearly. We almost always start with ride-hailing. Then we add logistics services — moving not just people, but also goods — and then food delivery. Depending on the city, the mix can look slightly different. Layer by layer, we build a set of products that makes everyday life more convenient for residents. At the same time, we support not only users, but also partners. We build our business on top of companies that already exist in the market — not replacing them, but strengthening them with our technology.

– Cities in different countries are structured very differently. How universal can such platforms be?

– At a high level, everything may seem universal, but in practice, details make all the difference. We quickly realized that every city is different — in its infrastructure, culture, and habits. If you don’t understand that, the product simply won’t work.

Internally, we have a principle: go global, go local — and in reality, local matters more. In some places, the core of mobility is three-wheeled transport; in others, scooters work; elsewhere, they don’t. Even “premium service” means different things in different cities.

You can’t see these things through numbers alone — they can only be understood through real experience and conversations with people. That’s why we spend a lot of time in the field: traveling to different countries, using our own services — sometimes even as drivers or couriers — and talking to users and partners. That’s the only way to understand how a city really works.

Over time, we also realized something important: local teams understand the market better than any central team ever could. In Azerbaijan, we’ve been lucky in that sense — from the very beginning, we’ve had a strong local team, including Mushvig, the head of Yango Azerbaijan, who deeply understands the market and helps make the right decisions on the ground.

That’s why we are increasingly giving more responsibility and autonomy to local teams — from product decisions to business development. Our role is to provide the technology and the platform, while local teams build services that truly fit their cities. If you create real value for users, the business follows.

– Azerbaijan is actively developing its digital economy and infrastructure. How do you assess the country's potential for the development of urban tech services?

– We’ve been working in Azerbaijan for several years and have seen solid progress. It’s a very dynamic market: we test new products, launch them, close some, and try again.

I’ve been in Baku for a few days now, and you can really feel it. The city is alive — full of energy, ideas, and people who want to build. That’s probably the key. There’s a strong entrepreneurial culture here — people are constantly looking for opportunities, trying new things, and willing to take risks.

For a tech company, that kind of environment really matters. It’s in markets like this that new services emerge faster and demand for digital solutions grows naturally. Recently, we signed a memorandum on cooperation in digital technologies with the Innovation and Digital Development Agency of Azerbaijan. For us, this is a market with real potential — not just because of the technology, but because of the people who are ready to use it and build on top of it.

–Tech platforms are often accused of displacing local businesses. How do you respond to this criticism?

– I’d say that argument is backwards. We don’t displace local businesses — we work alongside them and help them grow. Honestly, our partners are the best people to answer that question. But we try not to guess — we measure. We look at how their business and their P&L (Profits and Losses) change: are they earning more with us or not? If we see that they’re starting to lose, it means we’re doing something wrong and need to rethink the model.

This is part of our DNA. Sometimes it’s harder than building everything ourselves, but it’s the only way to be truly local. Our partners are not just part of the business — they’re our main source of understanding how the market actually works.

– In many markets where you operate, there are already strong local players. What usually becomes the main factor of competition in such conditions?

– We try to compete not with money, but with math. In our business, everything ultimately comes down to algorithms, details, and how the product is built. That’s why we invest in technology — for example, we have our own maps and navigation. This allows us to build more accurate algorithms and operate the product at a different level. These are often invisible things: how a route is calculated, how a fare is set, how a map is displayed. But these details are what ultimately determine the quality of the service.

A good example is our power bank sharing business. At one point, we saw that devices on the market were underperforming compared to what was promised, which led to a poor user experience. We rebuilt the model — and that improved both partner economics and the user experience.

In that sense, competition isn’t about who has more money. It’s about who understands the product better and can deliver a higher-quality experience. If you get that right, people come back — and from there, the rest follows.

– Today, AI is being actively integrated into transport, logistics, and urban services. Where do you see its greatest impact?

– AI will eventually change almost everything we see around us — just not all at once.

Like many others, we first tried the easy path: taking an existing process and “bolting” AI onto it. But that doesn’t really work. The real impact comes when you reinvent the process from scratch and build it as a hybrid of humans and AI — where they actually reinforce each other.

For example, we redesigned the driver reactivation process in Peru this way. We built a model where both people and AI agents work with drivers, continuously learning and improving the system. Only after rebuilding it from the ground up did we start seeing real results.

It will be the same with cities. At first, everyone will try to layer AI onto existing processes — and that’s a natural stage. Some solutions won’t last, but it’s how the industry learns. Then comes the next phase — when systems are rebuilt from the ground up around AI.

Ultimately, cities will operate as hybrid systems, where technology helps manage complex processes and improves quality of life. But this is a ten-year horizon, not something that happens in a year or two.

In that sense, Azerbaijan is an interesting market — it has a progressive regulator and a strong openness to new technologies. This doesn’t always make things easier for businesses, but it does accelerate how quickly cities evolve.

–Many companies today are simply embedding AI into products. Do you think there is a future in this?

– I’d like to believe we’re heading toward a positive future — not a “Matrix” scenario. AI has the potential to accelerate entire industries. For example, in medicine and drug development, things that used to take decades can now happen in years — or sometimes even faster.

I recently spoke with students in molecular biology, and they explained how AI can speed up work on things that once seemed almost impossible — like using bacteriophages to fight viruses more precisely. What we see today — image generation, text, chatbots — is just the tip of the iceberg. The real potential lies deeper, in the processes where AI can accelerate discoveries and reshape entire sectors.

So yes, there is definitely a future here. It’s just much broader and deeper than how we use AI today.

–More broadly, how can AI change cities themselves?

– AI will lead to a deeper integration of the physical and digital worlds — simply because it will become much cheaper and faster to build these connections. For example, one project that’s very close to me personally is the integration of ambulance services into our app. People can see in real time where the ambulance is and when it will arrive, and they can adjust the pickup location to help the crew get there faster. In Tashkent, this project is already working at scale, and according to local services, it’s helping save lives by making the process more transparent and efficient.

It’s important to understand that in the past, these kinds of solutions were difficult to implement — too many integrations, too expensive. Now they’re becoming much more accessible.

The next stage will be the emergence of entirely new services that we can’t even predict today. It’s similar to the early days of smartphones — no one could have anticipated what apps would look like. So the key task now is to experiment, iterate, and learn how to better connect the physical and digital worlds.

–As automation increases, concerns about security and control also grow. Do you worry that we could reach a point where these systems become difficult to manage?

– It’s normal to be afraid, especially if you grew up on movies like The Terminator. But in reality, it’s much more complex — and far less dramatic. It’s not just about developing new technologies, but about making them understandable and manageable for people — at the level of interface, interaction, and trust. At the same time, we need to build the fundamentals: security, control, and ethics.

At the same time, ethics isn’t universal. Every country and culture has its own norms, and they can’t be ignored. So the key is finding the right balance: on the one hand, not over-regulating too early so that innovation can develop; on the other, gradually building rules together with governments.

–How do you see the development of Yango Group in the coming years?

– To be honest, I don’t really like making long-term forecasts. If we had met three years ago, I wouldn’t have even mentioned half of what we do today — the technology simply wasn’t ready then.

Most likely, in a couple of years, a lot will change again. But the direction is clear: we are moving toward making more of our processes hybrid — a combination of humans and technology. This applies both to our products and to how we operate in cities.

We already see how automation and AI are starting to reshape how services work — not just at отдельных этапах, but at the system level. This isn’t about replacing people; it’s about removing heavy, routine work and creating more opportunities for both users and partners.

At the same time, we’re integrating more deeply with the physical world. What may look like separate projects today — such as integrating traffic lights into maps or connecting ambulance services — is, for us, the beginning of a broader system.

Our goal is to scale these solutions and make them work together, so that over time our services become part of the urban infrastructure — making city life simpler and more predictable.