Uber’s biggest rival (at least on the African continent) Taxify, has changed its brand name to Bolt.
This name change for the Estonian ride hailing which has the majority of its users in Africa, Western Asia and Europe, comes as the company has added electric scooter sharing to its services, in order to diversify and become a much broader transport service going far beyond cars.
Taxify in an email response to questions from Business Report says that the name change is due to the fact that they will no longer only just be focusing on cars but believes the future of transportation is electric.
Excerpts from said email response say “Taxify launched five years ago with a mission to make urban transportation more convenient and affordable. Our first product was a taxi dispatch solution that gave the company its original name.”
“While we’ve made progress on our mission, we’ve also started to outgrow parts of our brand, including the name. Given our ambition to solve transportation problems on an increasingly broader scale, we want the brand to reflect the company’s future rather than the past.”
In May of 2018, Taxify (now Bolt), raised $175 million (17.4 billion Kenyan shillings) in funding courtesy of an investor group led by Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes Benz. Taxify (Bolt), which was launched in 2013, claims it has 500,000 drivers and 10 millon customers in 25 African and European countries. Chinese company Didi Chuxing, is also one of the company’s key investors and its last investment round, took Taxify’s (Bolt’s) valuation to an impressive $1 billion (99.63 billion Kenyan shillings).
While still considered by a few market observers as a distant second to Uber in some markets, Taxify successfully carved a niche for itself, as an affordable and formidable rival, going as far as earning the number one spot in some cities. In cities like Nairobi, Kenya where there are lower fare prices points, Taxify is sometimes the preferred service provider by locals.
Local drivers in Nigeria, say the ride sharing service allowed them to use older cars on the platform, unlike its major competitor Uber.
Taxify’s introduction of electric scooters is focused on Europe for now with its operations offering short term electric scooter rentals, beginning in Paris six months ago. There is however, a sense that its (Taxify/Bolt) diversification in transport services, would spread to other markets where it already has a strong presence, especially those where gridlocked traffic going on for hours, is the order of the day.
Taxify (Bolt), is also planning to further expand in sub-saharan Africa, looking to reach more cities and provide more services. According to qz.com, it has already surpassed Uber in Africa and especially Nigeria, after it expanded to more cities in the country.
Users will not have to take any action on their mobile devices regarding the change, as the company has already implemented said changes on its apps with the addition of the ‘Bolt’ name, a new logo design, as well as an update on the user interface.
It will be the first company to bundle ride and bike hailing in a single app.
