Costa Rican company Obnis launched today their application, a competition of UBER.

Obnis was created as an alternative in the private transportation sector, and in order to give clients a “Test drive” of their service they will be offering free trips for all new users for a limited time and with some restrictions.

Over 4,000 users had downloaded the app just minutes after it was launched in Play Store, and out of these, 1,500 had already requested a service taking advantage of the promotion which applies only for clients within the Metropolitan Area.

“We are launching our service with free rides, this applies to new users whose total traveling distance is of 8 kilometers (5 miles) or less”, explained Andres Tang, Marketing Chief of Obnis.

Tang also mentioned that they had already been suffering from cyber attacks (hackers), however, this has been handled and is not affecting the service for now.

“It (Obnis) is a very complete platform with a lot of room to expand and able to solve some of the big problems, like transportation and logistics, the application takes on the private transportation of people and logistics”, said Oscar Martinez, general manager of the company.

According to Martinez, they hope to integrate formal and informal cab drivers to their system, they will be requesting a 15% commission and will only be handling card payments.

Obnis, is 100% a Costa Rican company and is different from UBER in that users will also be able to request messenger services, transportation of furniture or other big objects, among others; however for the time being, it will only operate within the Metropolitan Area, this will be changing in the next months as the company continues to expand to all the country and in a next phase to Central America.

For now the application is available for Android devices through the Play Store under the name Obnis and its expected to be launched on Monday for iOS devices in the Apple Store.