Mytaxi buys Clever Tech to take on Uber in Romania

Mytaxi buys Clever Tech to take on Uber in Romania
Clever Tech co-founder and CEO Mihai Rotaru.
By bne IntelliNews June 23, 2017

Europe’s largest mobile taxi application operator Mytaxi, part of Daimler group, has acquired Romanian company Clever Tech, which operates mobile application Clever Taxi, the two companies announced on June 22.  

With the acquisition of Clever Taxi, Mytaxi strengthens its presence on the European market, where it aims to mount a challenge to lift-sharing service Uber. The Stuttgart-based company bought Greece’s Taxibeat earlier this year. 

The size of the deal was not disclosed but the statement said it was “10 figures”.

The Romanian company was founded by local entrepreneurs Mihai Rotaru (now the company's CEO) and Alexandru Dumitru in 2010. According to the company, it was launched in response to a need for a safe alternative to finding a taxi at peak hours in crowded areas of the city. 

“Since 2010, Clever Taxi has opened up the way you travel in the cities of Romania. Mytaxi is an ideal partner for us because we are determined to invest in the local market so that we provide the safest and most legitimate form of authorised transportation and to help people move more easily through advanced mobility solutions,” Rotaru said in a statement. 

“We look forward to working with the Mytaxi team to develop new innovative mobility solutions for both drivers and passengers.”

At this moment, Clever Taxi has 17,000 taxi drivers enrolled and more than 600,000 customers use the mobile application.

Mytaxi already operates in 11 countries where it has more than 120,000 taxi drivers enrolled in similar mobile applications.

At the time of the sale, Rotaru owned 29.8% of the company, Dumitru 29.8%, Bestjobs Recrutare (which is owned by Romanian internet millionaire Catalin Fusu) 34.1% and Vector Watch founder Andrei Pitis 6.1%.

Following the takeover, Clever Taxi plans to extend its tech team from 25 to 50 and to boost the number of taxi drivers enrolled in the application. 

An R&D centre focused on mobility solutions could be set up in Bucharest, as well, Rotaru said. A final decision on the R&D centre would be taken within a couple of months, Mytaxi CEO Andrew Pinnington has confirmed. The centre would be used for the development of the whole My Taxi system.

Meanwhile, rival Uber has been experiencing problems in Bucharest recently. Transporters and taxi drivers affiliated to the Confederation of licensed operators and transporters in Romania (COTAR) protested in April against what they called "piracy on the transport market”. The Romanian transporters said it should be compulsory for applications such as Uber to get transport licenses.

 

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