Belka Car

How I helped solve an infrastructure problem in a major car-sharing service.
On May 7, 2023, while walking around Moscow with Alexey Solodkiy (an employee of Belka Car), we noticed that due to GPS signal jamming, it was impossible to rent a car. Tens of thousands of vehicles across the city were standing idle — and we came up with a solution.
Initiated the implementation of a UX feature
Description
  • Because of the disruption, users could see a car on the street but could not find it in the app, which prevented them from starting a rental.

  • I drew the team’s attention to the problem and suggested a quick fix: adding the ability to manually enter the license plate number to access the car card.
Result
  • The feature was implemented within 24 hours, and the geolocation issue no longer interfered with rentals.

  • Other major car-sharing operators across the country followed this example.

  • Hundreds of thousands of people were able to use the service right before the weekend.

  • The company didn’t lose revenue due to the disruption - on the contrary, it earned more thanks to the preserved rentals.