Germany-headquartered taxi hailing app developer MyTaxi agreed a merger with UK-based counterpart Hailo, which is backed by telecommunications company KDDI, today.
MyTaxi, which is owned by automotive company Daimler, will own 60% of the combined entity, which will take its name and be situated in Germany, while Hailo will own 40%. Hailo will retain its valuation and investors and no new cash has been provided.
Both Hailo and MyTaxi have built apps that enable users to book rides with taxi drivers. They will jointly have 100,000 registered drivers across more than 50 cities spanning nine European countries.
Founded in 2011, Hailo had raised almost $80m in total, with KDDI investing as part of a $30.6m round in 2013 that included Union Square Ventures, Phenomen Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Red Swan Ventures, Accel Partners, Wellington Partners, Atomico and Richard Branson. Vectr Ventures is also an investor.
Founded in 2009, MyTaxi raised more than $13m from investors including Daimler’s Car2Go unit, T-Venture, which acted as telecom group Deutsche Telekom’s corporate venturing unit, KfW Bankengruppe and Cinco Capital before Daimler’s mobility services business, Moovel, bought it in 2014.
Andrew Pinnington, Hailo’s CEO, will take the same position at the merged business. He told TechCrunch: “What is starting to happen in this industry is that you are starting to see the emergence of regional winners and funding is starting to happen for those, whether they are Ola or Grab or Lyft.
“And while our plan and targets resonated with the investment community, we were both going to them with the same story, which is that we both wanted to be European number one.”