Latin American taxi app yesterday Easy Taxi announced its global expansion in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The company recently received funding of US$10-million from Rocket Internet and African Internet Holding, which is helping it expand across the globe.
Head of Expansion for EasyTaxi had this to say “In 2011, Easy Taxi started in Brazil to connect taxi drivers and passengers in the best possible way. By now, the app has over 1.5-million downloads and more than 45 000 taxi drivers in the network. We want to bring this success to other attractive markets and we see high potential in many Asian and African countries.”
Yesterday’s round of funding comes from Africa Internet Holding, a joint venture between Rocket Internet and 35% owner, telecoms operator Millicom. This is the same pair that backed Easy Taxi with $15 million in June, through another joint venture, Latin American Internet Holding.
That earlier round is being used to expand Easy Taxi in Latin America. So far, Easy Taxi has amassed 1,500,000 downloads and more than 45,000 taxi drivers in markets where it is active. The service is present in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, South Korea and Venezuela.
Sacha Poignonnec, co-CEO of AIH, says that after Nigeria, Easy Taxi will go to eight more countries by the end of this year, including Morocco, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, Algeria, Tunisia and Angola.
EasyTaxi’s app is available for iOS, Android and the new BlackBerry devices reaching the smartphone owning middle-class. Smartphone penetration is not up top 50% yet in Nigeria but trends show it’s only a matter of a few years before smartphones become mainstream. Based on this, Poignonnec says that Easy Taxi will likely introduce a basic phoning service, tapping into its existing call center infrastructure that was put in place for its sister site Jumia.
Nigeria already has an online Taxi booking service for Lagos – TaxiPark. Stakeholders will be looking at how TaxiPark holds against new and aggressive tactics from Rocket.
Source: TechCrunch, VentureBurn.
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Tags : EasyTaxi, mobile app, nigeria, Rocket Internet, Taxi service., TaxiPark
