This is what happened around the world in Urban Mobility

Welcome to the weekly news roundup by Splyt, the place where you can find the most important news in the Urban Mobility space. This week, we have divided the headlines geographically. We hope you enjoy the read!

MENASA: Careem, Moovit

Following the trend of ride-hailing platforms offering food delivery services, Middle East’s Careem has acquired RoundMenu. The startup is “UAEs restaurant discovery online platform for the restaurant seekers”. This acquisition puts Careem in direct competition with other food delivery services in the region such as UberEats, Talavat, Deliveroo and Zomato.

Meanwhile, as part of a series D investment round, the Israeli company Moovit has recently raised $50 million. Moovit is a transit app that helps more than 120 million people get around in 80 countries — and, of course, it also collects their data. It is therefore no surprise that an autonomous vehicle tech startup could benefit from such data. As part of their latest funding round, Moovit stated that they are looking at finding ways to synergise and partner with AV startup Mobileye.

ASIA: Sony, Uber, Kakao Mobility

Japan seems to be the current hot country for ride-hailing opportunities. Currently, it is reigned by its powerful taxi industry. JapanTaxi is currently the dominant application in the country, with more than 53k taxis available. However, a bunch of companies have plans to enter the ride-hailing market in the near future. Surprisingly enough, Sony is one of them, last week the company revealed it has plans to launch an AI powered ride-hailing app in partnership with local taxi companies.

Meanwhile, Uber says it plans to change its strategy to grow in the multibillion Japanese market. Dara Khosrowshahi mentioned in his first visit to the country as Uber’s CEO:

“I saw Japan as an incredible opportunity, and when I asked the team why wasn’t our Japan business larger, I started learning the history of our approach to Japan, and it was an approach that frankly didn’t work,” Khosrowshahi said in Tokyo on Tuesday. “It’s clear to me that we need to come in with partnership in mind, and in particular a partnership with the taxi industry here.”

Similarly to Japan, Korea’s taxi industry is incredibly strong. Back in 2015, taxi unions managed to drive Uber out of the country — carpooling apps have faced similar resistance but have not been shut down. One of them is Luxi. Kakao Mobility, the current e-hailing leader in the country, works with certified taxis only but has announced the acquisition of the carpooling app Luxi. We are yet to see whether this new deal will tarnish Kakao’s relationship with taxi drivers.

EUROPE: CityMapper, TfL, Taxify

And another city that everyone wants to serve is London — CityMapper, the app that helps people find the optimal route to get from A to B, has launched “smart ride”. CityMapper has started operating a mini-van ride-sharing option which mimics a bus service in central east London. They have been granted a private hire license by TfL. Today is the last day CityMapper is offering free rides for Londoners!

On the other hand, the Estonian ride-hailing company, Taxify, wants to make a comeback to the UK’s capital. This month, they have filed a 160-page license application for a license to TfL. They have admitted to their pasts mistakes in hopes to get a second chance.

USA: Uber, Vugo

Uber has recently rolled out Uber Express Pool to more cities in the US. The service promises to be cheaper than UberPool but the catch is that passengers will not be picked up at their doorstep — it requires people to walk to a pickup point so as to optimise the route and travel time.

Vugo, a US-based company founded in 2015, has gotten the green light to distribute digital advertisements for private hire cars. We are familiar with the concept, regular taxis have displayed advertisement for years, but until recently, Vugo was not allowed to operate in New York with ride-hailing company drivers from companies such as Uber and Lyft.

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