Three On-Demand Taxi Startups Are Joining Forces To Take On Uber
The potential alliance, which may serve to unify regional ride-hailing markets, "would include knowledge sharing and maybe cross-booking," Brian Cu, the co-founder of GrabTaxi, told BuzzFeed News. "If you're in the Philippines, you can book a GrabTaxi using the OlaCabs app; it's in the realm of possibilities, so maybe Softbank is trying to do that."
Oneal Bhambani, the CFO of Flywheel, which offers a similar taxi-hailing service and is based in San Francisco, told BuzzFeed News his company was also made aware of a potential alliance. Bhambani has apparently talked to teh CEOs of OlaCabs and GrabTaxi.This alliance would rival on-demand ride-hailing juggernaut Uber, which operates in 53 countries and 200 cities and raised $1.2 billion in December at a $41 billion post-money valuation. To date, Uber has raised $3.3 billion in funding, and has proven itself to be more than just an on-demand car service startup: by dipping into experimenting with food delivery, moving, on-demand flu shots, and more, Uber could prove itself to be a large-scale dispatch and logistics company.
In a blog post announcing the company's latest round of funding, CEO Travis Kalanick said the new funding would be used to create more than 1 million jobs in 2015 and to "make significant investments, particularly in the Asia Pacific region."
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