The new company will bring together Hailo’s operations in the UK, Ireland and Spain, with MyTaxi’s business across Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden, if it wins the backing of regulators. The new company will be 60% owned by Daimler with the balance held by existing Hailo shareholders.
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The enlarged company will operate under the Mytaxi brand and be headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, the companies announced Tuesday.
Daimler has secured a merger between ride-hailing company Hailo and its service MyTaxi in a bid to embolden it against intrusion from a global leader in the industry, Uber. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The merged entity will operate under the MyTaxi brand and will boast 100,000 registered taxi drivers over 50 cities. Niclaus Mewes, founder of Mytaxi, is taking a seat on the supervisory board.
Hailo is strong in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and will combine its business with Daimler’s MyTaxi giving the German carmaker a majority stake in the combined business, two sources, who declined to be named, told Reuters. “We are prepared to make further strategic investments as we continuously build our mobility eco-system.” said.
That is well below other companies operating in this space from these parts: Volkswagen recentlyinvested $300 million in Israel’s Gett, while Cabify recently closed a €120 million round from Rakuten and others.
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The two companies still need approval from the European Regulatory Authorities; a decision will be reached in the next few weeks.
