Chauffeur Privé: Keeping Paris' premium car-ride platform rolling

About Chauffeur Privé

Chauffeur Privé, now Kapten, offers private-hire vehicle services, with 1.5 million customers and 18,000 drivers in Paris, Lyon, and the French Riviera.

Industries: Travel & Hospitality
Location: France

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Chauffeur Privé uses Google Compute Engine, Google Cloud SQL, and other Google Cloud tools to power a robust, multi-cloud system and process requests in real time, keeping its drivers moving.

Google Cloud results

  • Powers its monitoring stack with Google Compute Engine for real-time processing
  • Enables easy monitoring and control thanks to access through Google Groups
  • Integrates within a redundant, multi-cloud environment to help ensure high availability

Driver positions updated every 4 to 5 seconds

By offering a range of additional services, such as prebooking, and building trust with both customers and drivers, private-vehicle hire app Chauffeur Privé, now rebranded as Kapten, has grown over the past six years to become a leading player in the French market, with Daimler AG becoming a majority stakeholder in 2017. It currently operates in Paris, Lyon, and the French Riviera, with 1.8 million customers and approximately 18,000 drivers.

Chauffeur Privé stands out from its competitors thanks to the quality of service it provides, with additional benefits for loyal customers who accrue points that can be exchanged for journeys. The price for a journey is calculated depending on both the distance and traffic conditions, and demand and availability of drivers in the area. "Our major technological challenges are quick calculation, and stability," says Samuel Rossille, CTO at Chauffeur Privé. "The app refreshes the driver positions every 4 to 5 seconds, and we have thousands of drivers connected at a time. Any system delays mean our customers receive inaccurate journey times or are left standing. Both scenarios are unacceptable."

"Our system is built to make the most of all the tools out there. Implementing a multi-cloud environment means we are prepared if the network were to ever go down. But the advantages of working with Google Cloud is that it is very reliable — so we can move quickly."

Samuel Rossille, CTO, Chauffeur Privé

To build a system that is as robust as possible with several layers of backup, Chauffeur Privé decided to create a multi-cloud infrastructure based on microservices with built-in redundancy using parallel architectures. It looked for powerful services that offer flexibility and are simple to implement; Google Cloud was the perfect fit.

"Our system is built to make the most of all the tools out there," says Samuel. "Implementing a multi-cloud environment means we are prepared if the network were ever to go down. But the advantages of working with Google Cloud is that it is very reliable — so we can move quickly."

A smooth implementation

Driver apps that facilitate movement in real time need to have a very stable infrastructure, as a customer who is in transit gets frustrated waiting to receive driver or payment information. As Chauffeur Privé’s infrastructure grew, it looked for tools that would fit into its multi-cloud system and were easy to implement and manage. For each tool it wanted powerful processing capability that is as reliable as possible.

"Each tool has a clear function. For our parallel cloud provider, we needed a specialist technician to assist with training. With Google Cloud, we haven't needed a technician — or an implementation partner. That's a big bonus."

Samuel Rossille, CTO, Chauffeur Privé

To achieve that, the company implemented Google Compute Engine to run Virtual Machines for its monitoring stack. "Our implementation happened progressively. Every time we had a problem, Google Cloud had the solution," says Samuel. Now, in addition to Compute Engine, it uses Google Stackdriver for storage and Google Cloud Load Balancing. "Implementing Cloud Load Balancing has saved us a lot of time. It was simple, and it works very well," says Samuel.

Thanks to the clear Google Cloud dashboard and Google support for single sign-on, Chauffeur Privé can keep track of system access. "Because we use Google Workspace for our office system, administering access through Google Groups is very handy for us," says Samuel. "We can structure the management of our VMs in a completely transparent way. That's important because a small technical team doesn't have time to waste on administration."

"Each tool has a clear function," explains Samuel. "For our parallel cloud provider, we needed a specialist technician to assist with training. With Google Cloud, we haven't needed a technician — or an implementation partner. That's a big bonus."

Industry standard tools

When choosing services for its system, Chauffeur Privé wants to use tools that are able to integrate with other systems and that represent an industry standard, to avoid being locked in to obsolete technologies in the future. In order to further improve its system, it is currently implementing Kubernetes using Google Kubernetes Engine.

"Google Cloud helps us to meet our technical challenges by enabling us to not waste time on the low-level details of the infrastructure. We can focus on fine-tuning all our processes, and delivering the best possible support to our drivers and the best possible service to our customers."

Samuel Rossille, CTO, Chauffeur Privé

"What gives us confidence is that Kubernetes has become an industry standard," says Samuel. "That means it will be around for the long term and we can integrate it within our multi-cloud infrastructure with no problems."

Expanding internationally

Thanks to Google Cloud, Chauffeur Privé's infrastructure is as reliable, stable, and available as possible. The Chauffeur Privé team is able to focus on system improvements, rather than maintenance or administration. Now, the team wants to focus on optimizing the platform further in order to support the international expansion of the company. "Once we finish our Google Kubernetes Engine migration in six months, we'll be able to see even better results," says Samuel.

"Google Cloud helps us to meet our technical challenges by enabling us to not waste time on the low-level details of the infrastructure," says Samuel. "We can focus on fine-tuning all our processes, and delivering the best possible support to our drivers and the best possible service to our customers."

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

Contact us

About Chauffeur Privé

Chauffeur Privé, now Kapten, offers private-hire vehicle services, with 1.5 million customers and 18,000 drivers in Paris, Lyon, and the French Riviera.

Industries: Travel & Hospitality
Location: France