Moving from London, Hailo will join MyTaxi at its headquarters in Hamburg, Germany.
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Daimler, parent company of Mercedes-Benz, will own 60% of the newly merged venture, with the remaining 40% going to Hailo stakeholders.
The new entity will be Europe’s largest taxi e-hailing company with around 70m passengers and 100,000 registered taxi drivers operating in nine countries.
Mytaxi of Daimler, Germany, and Britain’s Hailo confirmed Tuesday they’d merge in an all-share deal, creating Europe’s biggest smartphone-based cab-hailing business.
All Hailo operations will be rebranded in the UK, Ireland and Spain by mid-2017. Niclaus Mewes, the founder of Mytaxi, will sit on the board.
Taxi app Hailo is to merge with its German equivalent mytaxi – a subsidiary of Daimler Mobility Services. He said Daimler had invested 500 million euros ($550.7 million) in such platforms and services to date and that it was “prepared to make further strategic investments” in the future.
The industry continues to defragment as a result of mergers and big-time investments from Volkswagen investing in Gett, both Didi Chuxing and General Motors tapping into Lyft and of course Apple’s bn backing of Didi Chuxing. It maintained a presence in 20 cities across the world and had, before the Daimler deal, raised over $100m and is now backed by Union Square Ventures, Accel Partners, Wellington Partners, Atomico Ventures and Sir Richard Branson.
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The announcement of the proposed combined business is subject to the approval of the European Regulatory Authorities and a decision is expected in the next weeks.
