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We Seek to Accelerate Innovation in the Service Industry
In ten years, RUA Asistencia has managed to develop 15 business units and internationalize; now it collaborates with the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Before founding RUA Asistencia, Diego Sayanes was a worker with an almost obsessive vision of the goals to achieve, without waiting for the ideal job or hierarchical position and regardless of the adversities or uncertainties that arose. That perspective is what he still retains and adopts when forming work teams: always giving their best without looking to the sides. Ten years later, RUA is a consolidated company that has seen significant growth. According to its CEO, at the beginning of the venture, he was on the verge of giving up more than once but persevered with a clear vision: to build a cutting-edge, disruptive company. “That obliges you to be constantly innovating and taking risks because if you don’t, you cease to be,” Sayanes emphasized. For him, innovation is in the company’s DNA and is evident in its service offerings, the technologies it employs, and its business model.
In these ten years, how many business units have you incorporated?
The flagship product is roadside assistance, which is what the end consumer identifies us with the most. However, the company has around 15 different business units. We’ve leveraged the potential of our marketing and communication teams and created a digital marketing agency called Onírica. We have an e-commerce company, ServiciosYa!, which is an application and web service where people can request services. We also have a technological innovation hub called Coopera Innovation Hub and a web-based loyalty platform called Mashkady. Additionally, we’ve diversified into Latin American markets and the UK market.
In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, you expanded to Paraguay. Why, and what does that market offer?
It was in our plan to expand abroad and establish ourselves in Paraguay. It’s a very interesting market with many possibilities. It’s also strategically important for our executive plan of internationalization into other markets.
Was the business objective always to scale?
Exactly. From the beginning, the company’s overall vision was to have a global presence. Once we were established in Uruguay, we began the process of internationalization. For example, Paraguay was on that roadmap, and we’re very pleased with the results we’re achieving. Within a year of being there, we’ve expanded our facilities. We now have an office in Asunción, in the financial district, and we’re initiating a hiring process for around 60 people.
The case of the UK is even more striking. What do you offer there?
The entry into the UK was somewhat serendipitous. I traveled to London to visit the London Tech Week and got a closer look at the market. In conversations with UK government officials, we managed to get support to introduce ServiciosYa!, called ServiceCity! there. We received support from the Department for International Trade, where ServiciosYa! was included in their “Global Entrepreneur” program. They seek entrepreneurs who have achieved a certain level of success in their home country and have the potential to scale globally. It’s an incredible market, and it has tremendous potential not only for ServiciosYa! but also for RUA Asistencia. We’ve now established RUA in the UK under RUA Assistance.
How much do you rely on technology to add more value to your services and users?
We’ve been using various technological tools. In this regard, we started a digitization process of the company a couple of years ago. On one hand, it’s about the user experience, the interaction with our clients and our clients’ clients. But it also involves the entire management process behind it. Some time ago, we began to shift from being just a technological company to becoming a purely technology-based company. This is also crucial for the process of internationalizing the company. As we can put technology at the service of this technical experience—we’ve provided over 1 million services in these 10 years, gaining all this know-how and expertise—it will greatly facilitate our internationalization.
What is the goal of Coopera Innovation Hub?
It aims to connect startups with the corporate world. Leveraging both RUA Asistencia’s client companies and others, we use our expertise in working with the corporate world to facilitate access for startups. We launched the Open Insurtech event, which received applications from nearly 200 startups from all over Latin America. We selected 25 of them to be incubated in Coopera, where they will receive mentoring and collaborate for five months to accelerate and improve their products and startups. In November, we will create negotiation opportunities with insurance companies. The goal is to accelerate the innovation process in the insurance industry through these startups that bring various technologies, including blockchain, drones, products for agriculture, health, and the automotive sector. We want to collaborate with the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We still consider ourselves entrepreneurs, and I believe Uruguay has a very rich ecosystem in terms of its diversity.
ServiciosYa! gained prominence. What are its objectives?
While RUA has many products that tend to provide coverage in contingency cases, what ServiciosYa! aims to do is to go directly to the end consumer who, through the website or by downloading the app, purchases a service at that moment and pays for it through the app. It doesn’t have to be related to emergencies; it can be about daily life tasks that take away time they’d rather spend with family or other things. From ordering a gardener, someone to wash your car, a domestic cleaning service, to having someone bathe your pet. In a very simple way, through three or four clicks, they choose the service they want, find the price, select when they want it, pay through the app, and it’s done. We aim to break certain paradigms where someone in need of such a service has to find someone they trust. Plus, all the prices are transparent. It’s a way to be more open and honest.
What is RUA’s main competitive advantage?
It’s still the quality of our services. To maintain such high quality, you need to have deep knowledge of the operations. We’ve managed to maintain that over the years. Additionally, it’s about the use and implementation of technology. Being such a tech-oriented company is a significant differentiator. To enter the UK market with RUA Assistance, we had to make a tremendous effort because it’s a much more mature market. We had to quickly develop the use of certain technologies internally and others for customer service, which we’ve implemented in local markets. The third very relevant aspect is the relationship with client companies. We’re obsessed with not only providing better service but also collaborating with our clients to help them grow. And, of course, the human quality of the teams we’ve built over this decade is a fundamental aspect when delivering our services.
