Daimler's MyTaxi to Buy Clever Taxi for Pan-European Service
Daimler AG’s DDAIF fully owned subsidiary, MyTaxi has agreed to buy its Romanian counterpart, Clever Taxi. The news was reported in Reuters. MyTaxi will acquire the company to facilitate a pan-European service against its rival, Uber Technologies.
Per Andrew Pinnington, CEO of MyTaxi, the acquirer is paying a hefty “eight figure” sum to purchase Clever Taxi and expects more such acquisitions to expand its presence in the Eastern Europe belt.
Prior to this acquisition, earlier this year, MyTaxi had bought Greece’s TaxiBeat.
A market leader in Romania, MyTaxi operates in 20 cities across the country. Similar to Uber Technologies, MyTaxi connects its drivers with the riders against a share of the paid fare. However, MyTaxi is more focused on metered taxis unlike Uber, mainly aiming for the unmetered cars and drivers, who aren’t formally registered as taxi drivers. Founded in 2009, the company was acquired by Daimler in 2014.
Expansion of ride-hailing services and future prospects of driverless vehicles have led to the prediction that people are more likely to switch to paid rides rather than buying their own cars. This has in turn influenced many automakers like Daimler to actively invest in ride-hailing application companies like MyTaxi, Lyft, Grab and Gett. The investment is done to ensure that the automakers do not become providers of low-margin commoditized hardware to bigger operators like Uber in the near future.
Volkswagen AG VLKAY has spent $300 million on Gett. Similarly, General Motors Company GM has funded $500 million on Lyft.
Headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, Daimler is the largest vehicle parts manufacturers in the world and one of the few companies to offer complete automated driving solutions.
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