Careem, a UAE based ride hailing company, and Shuttl, an Indian bus aggregator, have acqui-hired Commut, a Hyderabad based mass transit company, for an undisclosed amount. Careem will use the acquisition to expand into mass transit services by adding buses in its 100 cities in MENA, Pakistan and Turkey.
Investments in the companies
- Careem has raised about $571 million in venture funding so far from multiple investors like Daimler, Rakuten, Didi Chuxing.
- In July, Shuttl raised $11 million led by Amazon India, Amazon Alexa Fund and Dentsu Ventures, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Times Internet and Lightspeed Ventures.
- In May 2016, Commut raised $200,000 in funding from 50K Ventures.
The companies in numbers
- Careem claims to have 975,000 full time and part time drivers (which it calls Captains) and over 15 million users. Headquartered in Dubai, it is present in 100 cities across 14 countries.
- Shuttle claims to do 45,000 rides daily in Delhi NCR, and is available in 7 cities with 200 buses using 150 routes.
- Commut claims to have made 750,000 trips on 100 existing routes. It claims to have 70,000 users and 400 drivers.
Careem previously acquired RoundMenu, a UAE based food ordering app, and said that it would spend $150 million to launch a food delivery service.
Interestingly, Bloomberg reported in July that Uber was in talks to merge with Careem in the Middle East. This came months after Uber sold its Southeast Asian business to Grab.
I'm a MediaNama alumna from 2015-16 (remember TinyOwl?) now back to cover e-services like food and grocery delivery, app based transport and policies, platforms and media in India.
