Taxi hailing app company GetTaxi has raised $150 million in a huge financing round. The company has yet to name all the investors but they include Swedish fund manager Vostok Nafta Investment. The new financing will allow the company to launch business services in New York and expand services in London. The company will also expand business services to other European cities beyond its existing operations in London, Moscow and St. Petersburg. This brings the total GetTaxi has raised to more than $207 million, including an investment from tycoon Len Blavatnik.
GetTaxi's financing round comes exactly two months after the massive $1.2 billion raised by its rival Uber at a company value of $18.2 billion.
GetTaxi founder and CEO Shahar Waiser has spoken today about the profitability of his company. He said, “While most other companies in our space are losing money, GetTaxi is already profitable in 22 of 24 cities it operates and will become profitable at the group level in Q1 2015.”
Most of the 24 cities in which GetTaxi operates are in Israel.
The company's business model has allowed it to generate higher revenue than most of its rivals such as Lyft (US), Hailo (UK), and MyTaxi (Germany).
Vostok Nafta Investment said it had invested $25 million in GetTaxi's latest financing round and stressed it is impressed with the Tel Aviv-based company's B2B model with huge potential in the corporate sector. “Although competition is ripe everywhere, we think a conservative scenario is that GetTaxi becomes the leading player in Russia and Israel. That would give GetTaxi a potential valuation of more than $2 billion in “a couple of years," Vostok Nafta said.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 13, 2014
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