Invataxi App Integration — Kazakhstan's On-Demand Accessible Ride Service for Wheelchair Users

Invataxi originated in 2009 in Almaty, founded by the Sabi Charity Fund together with the Almaty City Society of Persons with Disabilities, as a fleet of wheelchair-adapted minivans for people with disabilities. For 15 years, however, rides had to be booked by phone at least a day in advance, ruling out spontaneous trips.

In 2024, Kazakhstan's Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population partnered with ride-hailing platform Yandex Go to integrate accessible-vehicle requests directly into the mainstream app. Riders can now specify accessibility needs when booking, get matched with trained drivers and adapted or standard vehicles, and request rides on demand rather than a day ahead; Yandex waived its usual commission on these trips. The integration was piloted in Astana and Almaty, with nationwide expansion confirmed for 2025 by Kazakhstan's Prime Minister's office.

App-based trips grew from 53,900 in 2023 to over 207,000 in 2024 — roughly a fourfold increase — according to Ministry data reported by Times of Central Asia. This is consistent in scale with earlier, pre-digital reporting: an Astana nonprofit predecessor was coordinating just over 3,000 trips a year as of 2019, per independent reporting from Astana Times.

The trip-count figures trace back to the same Ministry source cited by both news outlets rather than an independently audited count, so they should be read as government-reported rather than third-party-verified. The underlying adapted-vehicle fleet also predates the 2024 digital redesign by 15 years; this record evaluates specifically the on-demand app-integration change, not Invataxi's full history.

Read the full analysis: https://timesca.com/kazakhstan-expands-invataxi-services-with-taxi-aggregator-partnership/