Lyft Acquired Indian Startup to Venture into the Country

Lyft is the second largest online ride-hailing Transportation Company in the United States that has its operation in more than 300 cities and has expanded its service in hundred more cities in the US within March. By including the recent service operation it is found that the company has covered 67 percent of the cities in the country.

The ridesharing company is making use of all the possible opportunities in its industry to compete against its rival. As a part of its plan, the company has acquired an Indian startup to build a large infrastructure.

Alliance pack against the giant

The ride hauling company has earlier signed a global partnership with many Asian ride-sharing companies like Didi Kuaidi, Ola and GrabTaxi. With the joint venture the companies are trying to provide service in most of the countries in India, Southeast Asia, China and the US and by service, the companies can reach out to almost fifty percent of the population in the world.

With the Partnership, the companies are trying to leverage and collaborate their business resource, local market research and technology in such a way that they can help the international travellers to use the same application interface while they travel to another part of the world. By the partnership, the travellers all over India, Southeast Asia, China and the US can travel across the countries while the companies use their technology system to secure the application interface, routeing, mapping and payment process.

The companies formed the partnership in 2015, and they have raised seven billion dollars collectively so that the Lyft riders can travel in and around Asia with reliability, unparalleled ease and convenience. The Chinese ridesharing company is the leader in the main stream and has joined the alliance to focus on the big data tools that help the products to develop in the market by enhancing and innovating the user experience. Also, the partnership will help the travellers from China to be at ease when they travel abroad and simultaneously improve their own services and develop the technology in the global market.

Vast Indian market

India has the largest population in the world, similar to that of China. So the user base is large and it attracts many manufacturers and other companies to launch their service in the country. The leading ridesharing giant in the United States has launched its service in the country and it is trying to attract more customers to its side. And, Ola is the local ridesharing giant of the country that is competing against the Uber service.

Uber and Ola provide similar service to the riders with the slight change in the price and other features. Also, Ola has launched the auto service in its ridesharing option because the auto rickshaws are the most commonly used transportation system by the people of all strata.

Lyft acquired an Indian company so that the company can compete with its rival- Uber in the global market. The US-based company acquired FinitePaths, a Pune-based company, and it is a creator of the Quora like platform called the Trail Answers that offers answers to the questions asked by the user using the contextual, local and social signals. After the acquisition of the company, the founders of the FinitePaths Balaji Raghavan and Vinay Kakade will join the ridesharing company’s team and help them in building a large infrastructure and operation services.

Before starting the FinitePaths, the founders have worked in several organizations and have the knowledge in building search engines and large scale infrastructure. Balaji has worked in Google as an Engineering Director and left the tech company in 2015, while Vinay worked in Amazon and help in co-creating the Yahoo Research and CloudSearch platform.

The ride-hailing company’s Vice President said that the company is excited to work with an Indian startup and the professional experience of the founders of the company will help the ridesharing company to face the marketing challenges in the present and in future.

Acquisition stopped the service

Lyft acquired FinitePaths, but they have not disclosed the exact deal of the acquisition. However, the team and the founders of the company will move to Lyft’s operation. The company has already stopped accepting the registration of the new users in its Trial Answer application.

The founders of the startup company have posted about the acquisition and they have said that they are ready to face the challenges that come across in the building the infrastructure and services business. Within few days the company will stop its service and the existing customers will not be able to access their account in the Trial Answers app.

The ridesharing company is currently working on expanding its operation in the United States, where they already operate in three hundred cities and have started operating in hundred more cities in the country. The company has 37 million active users using their ridesharing service. In the beginning of the year, the company announced that it will expand its service in 100 cities by the end of the year, and in that process, the company launched its ridesharing service in 40 cities in January that increased to 56 by February and included 35 cities by the end of March.  So, the company had its milestone by launching its operation altogether in 131 cities within three months, and the total is almost thirty one percent more than the estimated count.

Other ridesharing companies in the Indian market

Apart from Uber and Lyft, there is many other ridesharing companies across the globe have ventured into the Indian market. The Indonesian bike and taxi service company Go Jek has acquired Codelgnition, C42 Technologies and Pianta- three of the Indian startups, to shore the team for their development center that the company has established in India. The main management system of the ridesharing company comes from the local service provider in the country- Ola.

Similarly, Grab Taxi the South-east Asian company announced its plan to set up a research institute in one of the major cities in the country in Bangalore. The company announced that they have planned to hire two hundred employees for their research institute that will focus on the payment technology industry. The company has hired Raghuram Trikutam to lead the engineering department in its center in India. Trikutam was the former Vice President of Engineering in Freecharge, a digital payment platform.

Lyft is the second largest ridesharing company that was founded in 2012 by John Zimmer and Logan Green. The main purpose of the ridesharing company is to reconnect the public and the communities together via a better transportation medium. Within four years of its launch, the ridesharing company has grown in about sixty percent of the palaces in the country. The service is preferred by both the drivers and the riders and is the best and friendly service that provides a positive vibration to the future of the ridesharing industry.

The company has partnered with the General Motors to build the self-driving cars that is the future of the ridesharing industry and is targeting to launch the service by the end of 2020. Soon the company’s operation will be seen in the Indian market.