Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Creating products aimed at smaller business users is a promising but challenging category in the area of enterprise software — they make up the vast majority of businesses today, but collectively are a fragmented customer base that is price sensitive and individually represents small ARPU. Today, a company that has found a way to tap the opportunity and capitalise on some of the challenges has raised a significant round of growth funding to tap into the opportunity.

Signpost, which has built a platform that today is used by thousands of local businesses to compete better against bigger companies — by letting them collect their own and subsequently use product reviews, construct and provide offers and manage contact lists of customers — has closed a round of $52 million, money that it will use to expand its technology and customer base.

The funding is described as “late-stage financing” (similar to the round it raised in 2016) and comes from HighBar Partners and BMO Bank of Montreal with previous investors Georgian Partners and Spark Capital also participating. Signpost has been around for about a decade, and its other backers have included OpenView Venture Parnters, Scout Ventures and GV (when it was still Google Ventures and Signpost was focusing on the viral marketing of local deals).

The Google connection is interesting: Signpost has gone through a few different iterations as a business and years ago was described as the “AdSense for local businesses.” It’s raised about $110 million to date, with its most recent funding (in 2016) at around $100 million, according to PitchBook data.

While Signpost is not disclosing valuation, I’m guessing it’s definitely higher than this now, judging by the size of this latest round, and some of the other metrics the company is disclosing: the company cash flow break-even as of early 2019, with 43% year-over-year growth in its core product and less than one percent customer churn. Its also hiring in its three locations, New York (its HQ), Austin, and Denver.

The problem that the company is tackling is one that local, independent and brick-and-mortar stores may know all too well: they have it hard when it comes to marketing.

Traditionally, they have relied on word-of-mouth and (among physical businesses) incidental foot traffic to maintain and grow trade. But in the age of shopping malls, the internet and the economy of scale that comes with it in e-commerce, many of those small businesses have found themselves caught out in figuring out how best to connect with existing customers and reach new ones.

Added to this is the issue of user reviews. These have become an important — some would say essential — cornerstone for how people discover and decide to buy one product or service over another online, in conjunction with other services like Google Maps and Yelp.

Signpost notes stats that say at least 82% of smartphone shoppers conduct ‘near me’ searches and 90% are likely to click on the first set of results, but that those without reviews conversely getting nary a glance or attentive nudge from the ever-powerful search algorithm.

On the other hand, the rise of user reviews has led to a pernicious counter theme: the proliferation of fake reviews and spam. This is something that small businesses struggle to get a handle on, and I’ve seen more than once a business bemoaning the presence of these on Google Maps without knowing how best to try to fix the issue.

This is where a company like Signpost comes in, proving a platform that is easy to use to help those businesses get a grip on providing their own review and feedback tools, and taking charge of other kinds of basic marketing and CRM features, such as mailing lists and creating offers that introduce new customers and reward loyal, repeat ones.

These are all table stakes for bigger businesses, and the idea is that small businesses should have them, too.

“While large corporations have used powerful marketing technology to drive extraordinary growth for years, local businesses — which make up 99.7% of all U.S. businesses and account for nearly half of GDP — have been left behind,” said Stuart Wall, founder and CEO of Signpost, in a statement. “Signpost puts the power of the world’s largest marketing departments in the hands of local business owners and empowers them to instantly capture their customer data, get better online reviews, and win new repeat business automatically and effortlessly.”

And in another feature that helps put small businesses on par with larger rivals, Signpost is also a big data powerhouse.

Signpost says that it has gathered behavioral data from over 70 million US consumers across all its local business customers, which it uses to feed its own algorithms to determine when and where to send personalised messages to a businesses’ contacts to help drum up more sales. Signpost claims that its tools have led to a 34% rise in and revenue lifts of 14%, on average.

Brian Peters, Managing Director at HighBar Partners, is joining Signpost’s Board of Directors with this round.

“HighBar’s investment is a vote of confidence in the right approach to applying technology to level the playing field for local businesses,” he said in a statement. “The turnkey setup and level of automation in Signpost’s platform, as well as their ability to follow through on reviews and engage the modern customer well beyond their first interaction is what really sets them apart.”

“We are excited to be working alongside Signpost – they have created an innovative solution to help small businesses compete and drive revenue growth,” said Devon Dayton, Managing Director, Technology & Innovation Banking, BMO Bank of Montreal, in a statement. “The company has experienced a lot of momentum and we are looking forward to continuing this journey with them through their next phase of growth.”

NiYo Solutions, a Bangalore-based ‘neo-bank’ that helps salaried employees access company benefits and other financial services, has raised $35 million in a new round to expand its business in the nation and explore international markets for some of its products.

The four-year-old startup, which serves small and medium businesses and other salaried employees across India, raised its Series B from Horizons Ventures, Tencent and existing investor JS Capital. It has raised $49.2 million to date, with its $13.2 million Series A closing in January last year.

NiYO Solutions serves as a ‘neo-bank’ that relies on traditional financial institutions (Yes Bank and DCB banks, in its case) and offers additional features such as lending and insurance to customers. Blue collared salaried employees in India continue to struggle to avail many crucial financial services that have been typically reserved for privileged segment by the banks. With Bharat Payroll Solution and other products, NiYO is trying to drive financial inclusion in the country, it said.

The startup also offers a global travel card with no mark up fee. Over 50,000 users have already signed up for the travel card, and NiYO intends to scale that figure to 500,000 by April next year. In an interview with TechCrunch, Vinay Bagri, co-founder and CEO of NiYO, said the startup is exploring bringing the travel card to other markets — though he did not share any names.

He said the startup will also use the fresh capital to build new product offerings and in expansion of its distribution and marketing efforts. It also wants to its customer base from about 1 million currently to grow to 5 million in the next three years. Bagri said NiYO is looking to acquire other startups that are a good fit for its vision.

Neo banks are increasingly becoming popular across the globe as traditional banks show little interest in addressing the needs of niche customer bases. Tide and N26 are showing remarkable growth in European markets, while Azlo, in the U.S., Tyro Payments and Volt Bank in Australia, are also among the top players.

In developing regions such as India, too, this tried and tested idea is increasingly being replicated. Open, another Bangalore-based neo-bank, helps businesses automate their finances. It raised $30 million last month.

What started as an accident has turning into a venture firm with a global reach and backing from a some of the biggest corporations in the automotive and transportation industries.

Maniv Mobility, the Israel-based venture capitalist firm, said Tuesday it has closed a new $100 million fund backed by 12 corporations, including the venture arms of the Aptiv, BMW, Hyundai, Lear Corp, LG Electronics, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, Shell and Valeo.

Other investors that joined the round include Deutsche Bahn Digital Ventures, the venture arm of the German rail and logistics operator Deutsche Bahn, the Israeli car importer Carasso Motors and numerous individuals, family offices and institutional investors, according to Maniv.

The company officially considers 2016 its launch date. Although founder and managing director Michael Granoff and Maniv partner Olaf Sakkers were making smaller angel investments back in 2015. The VC began raising its first fund, which ended up at $44 million, in 2016. (Granoff will be on stage July 10 in San Jose as part of the TC Sessions: Mobility event)

“We call ourselves an accidental VC,” Sakkers explained to TechCrunch recently. Since the beginning, they have focused on the thesis that there is a significant disruption happening in mobility and working closely with founders helps them develop their technology. “We’ve just realized that running a VC is the most effective way for us to do that,” he added.

Now, Maniv is taking its core beliefs global. The VC’s initially focused on transportation and mobility-related startups in Israel with a few in investments in the U.S. The company’s portfolio includes vehicle security company Owl, peer-to-peer car sharing company Turo, teleoperations startup Phantom Auto, autonomous vehicle-focused chipmaker Hailo, shared electric moped company Revel and in-vehicle software management firm Aurora Labs. It was one of the many VCs that backed Drive.ai, the troubled autonomous vehicle tech startup that was recently acquired (in what has been described as an acqui-hire) by Apple as it prepared to shut down.

The VC has made five investments from the new fund, including Spain-based car subscription startup Bipi and Revel. Three others have not been announced yet, although one is a startup focused on food delivery and another is a digital insurance firm.

Maniv Mobility is focused on just one vertical: mobility. But it’s taking a global investment approach by working with strategic partners in Europe, North America, Israel and in the long term, possibly India and other Asian markets. Those partnerships are central to the firm’s investment strategy and are on clear display in Tel Aviv, a city that has exploded in recent years with startups and a number of automotive venture arms.

“Mobility is a very global game,” Sakkers, told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “That’s something that we want to pursue plus, our network of investors actually want global exposure.”

Quip, maker of electric toothbrushes, is making use of its most recent acquisition to launch a dental insurance alternative to customers in New York City this summer. Called Quip Care, the service operates on the back of Afora, a dental insurance alternative startup Quip acquired last May.

With Quip Care, the goal is to modernize the dental care experience, Quip CEO Simon Enever told TechCrunch.

“People are used to being able to pick up their phone to book, pay for and track every aspect of their daily life,” Enever said. “We believe that seamlessness is something we can bring to dentistry.”

Additionally, the plan is to make prices more transparent so that people know exactly what they’ll pay before the treatment. There are two services as part of this launch: Quipcare and Quipcare+.

Basic Quipcare uses a pay-as-you-go model that enables you to find in-Quip network dentists, see pre-negotiated rates for non-preventative care upfront, pay for the care, accrue reward points and view dental records. Quip says Quipcare patients can expect prices of 30-40% less than the average dental care in their area. Enever said Quipcare can be an option for people without insurance or those with insurance who have already hit their annual maximum.

Quipcare+, on the other hand, is a preventative care plan that costs $25 per month. Quipcare+ includes two preventative check-ups annually as well as x-rays. This plan is more so geared toward people without dental insurance, though, Quipcare+ isn’t necessarily cheaper.

In San Francisco, I pay about $7 per month for dental insurance via my employer. But even if I didn’t go through my insurer, Covered California says I could get a comparable plan with covered preventive check-ups for $16.06 per month. What you’re essentially paying extra for are transparent pricing and the booking platform. Quipcare+ is similar to One Medical in that what you’re mostly paying for is convenience. One Medical is by no means cheaper than having regular insurance but the convenience they offer via app-based, same-day appointments and a plethora of locations can’t be beaten.

Quipcare is rolling out this summer in New York and plans to roll out more broadly next year. Thanks to the Afora acquisition, Quip already has hundreds of providers on board for Quipcare. And before launching Quipcare, Quip already had 40,000 providers on its Dental Connect platform.

“The key here is working with providers who are committed to making the finding, booking, paying experience as good as possible,” Enever said.

Quip began as a subscription-based electric toothbrush service that replaces toothpaste and brush heads, partly because you’re apparently supposed to change your toothbrush every three months. But Enever has said for years that Quip’s mission has always been to provide an end-to-end solution the makes preventative care simpler. Quipcare is just that.

To date, Quip has raised more than $60 million in funding from Sherpa Capital, TriplePoint Capital, NFP Ventures and others.

India ordered an investigation into Google’s alleged abuse of Android’s dominance in the country to hurt local rivals in April. A document made public by the local antitrust watchdog has now further revealed the nature of the allegations and identified the people who filed the complaint.

Umar Javeed, Sukarma Thapar, two associates at Competition Commission of India — and Aaqib Javeed, brother of Umar who interned at the watchdog last year, filed the complaint, the document revealed. The revelation puts an end to months-long interest from industry executives, many of whom wondered if a major corporation was behind it.

The allegations

The case, filed against Google’s global unit and Indian arm on April 16 this year, makes several allegations including the possibility that Google used Android’s dominant position in India to hurt local companies. The accusation is that Google requires handset and tablet vendors to pre-install its own applications or services if they wish to get the full-blown version of Android . Google’s Android mobile operating system powered more than 98% of smartphones that shipped in the country last year, research firm Counterpoint said.

This accusation is partly true, if at all. To be sure, Google does offer a “bare Android” version, which a smartphone vendor could use and then they wouldn’t need to pre-install Google Mobile Services (GMS). Though by doing so, they will also lose access to Google Play Store, which is the largest app store in the Android ecosystem. Additionally, phone vendors do partner with other companies to pre-install their applications. In India itself, most Android phones sold by Amazon India and Flipkart include a suite of their apps preloaded on the them.

“OEMs can offer Android devices without preinstalling any Google apps. If OEMs choose to preinstall Google mobile apps, the MADA (Mobile Application Distribution Agreement) allows OEMs to preinstall a suite of Google mobile apps and services referred to as Google Mobile Services (GMS),” said Google in response.

The second allegation is that Google is bundling its apps and services in a way that they are able to talk to each other. “This conduct illegally prevented the development and market access of rival applications and services in violation of Section 4 read with Section 32 of the Act,” the trio wrote.

This also does not seem accurate. Very much every Android app is capable of talking to one another through APIs. Additionally, defunct software firm Cyanogen partnered with Microsoft to “deeply integrate” Cortana into its Android phones — replacing Google Assistant as the default virtual voice assistant. So it is unclear what advantage Google has here.

Google’s response: “This preinstallation obligation is limited in scope. It was pointed out that preinstalled Google app icons take up very little screen space. OEMs can and do use the remaining space to preinstall and promote both their own, and third-party apps. It was also submitted that the MADA preinstallation conditions are not exclusive. Nor are they exclusionary. The MADA leaves OEMs free to preinstall rival apps and offer them the same or even superior placement.”

The third accusation is that Google prevents smartphone and tablet manufacturers in India from developing and marketing modified and potentially competing versions of Android on other devices.

This is also arguably incorrect. Micromax, which once held tentpole position among smartphone vendors in India, partnered with Cyanogen in their heyday to launch and market Android smartphones running customized operating system. Chinese smartphone vendor OnePlus followed the same path briefly.

Google’s response: “Android users have considerable freedom to customise their phones and to install apps that compete with Google’s. Consumers can quickly and easily move or disable preinstalled apps, including Google’s apps. Disabling an app makes it disappear from the device screen, prevents it from running, and frees up device memory – while still allowing the user to restore the app at a later time or to factory reset the device to its original state.”

Additionally, Google says it requires OEMs to “adhere to, a minimum baseline compatibility standard” for Android called Compatibility Definition Document (COD) to ensure that apps written for Android run on their phones. Otherwise, this risks creating a “threat to the viability and quality of the platform.”

“If companies make changes to the Android source code that create incompatibilities, apps written for Android will not run on these incompatible variants. As a result, fewer developers will write apps for Android, threatening to make Android less attractive to users and, in turn, even fewer developers will support Android,” the company said.

The antitrust is ongoing, but based on an initial probe on the case, CCI has found that Google has “reduced the ability and incentive of device manufacturers to develop and sell devices” running Android forks, the watchdog said. Google’s condition to include “the entire GMS suite” to devices from OEMs that have opted for full-blown version of Android, amounts to “imposition of unfair condition on the device manufacturers,” the watchdog added.

The document also reveals that Google has provided CCI with some additional responses that have been kept confidential. A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

Staffbase, a mobile-first platform that enables employees to communicate, access work-related services and stay updated with company information, has raised $23 million in Series C funding.

The investment is led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors e.ventures, Capnamic Ventures, and Kizoo Technology Capital. It brings total raised by Staffbase to $35 million since it was founded in 2014.

Founded in Chemnitz, Germany, and now with more than 200 employees across 7 locations, including a HQ in New York, Staffbase is an app and platform designed to wean employees off email for a range of communication, information and internal company processes. It initially targeted distributed and mobile workforces but has since broadened out to include desktop support, too.

“Successful companies today understand that their most valuable resource is their employees’ time and motivation,” says Staffbase co-founder and CEO Dr. Martin Böhringer. “Despite this, the experience provided to them when interacting with company news, searching for information in an intranet, or using HR services is often frustrating and disjointed. The experience tends to be even worse for workers without access to company computers or corporate email addresses, which makes up about 70% of the workforce today”.

To remedy this, Böhringer says Staffbase is technology that’s about “putting people first at work”. The platform creates one place for employees to go for access to everything they need to get their jobs done and also find further help when they need it.

“For us, people-first also means communications-first; we believe communications is the heart of employee experience,” he says. “Our solution is first and foremost an employee communication platform, because it’s not fun to work at a place where you don’t know what’s going on”. The platform also integrates with HR platforms and Office 365.

“We’re also big believers in equal access to positive experiences,” adds Böhringer. “Our platform was first developed as a mobile app with non-desk employees in mind, and over time we have taken the user experience we saw working there and applied it to build a sophisticated desktop experience as well. Because we developed mobile first and with normal people in mind, the whole platform is easy to use — end users don’t require any training to get started”.

Teddie Wardi, Managing Director at Insight Partners, says that Staffbase has created a “simple and flexible” mobile front end layer that can be designed around the employee journey. “They discovered that employee communication plays a crucial role for a people-first workplace and belongs at the heart of the employee experience,” he says. “We were particularly impressed with the high customer satisfaction and usage rates that Staffbase achieves with its customers”.

“We have customers located across the globe and in many different industries, but if we had to pick a common adjective it would be people-driven,” adds Böhringer. “Each of our customers has made it a priority to have an engaged workforce that understands the company’s purpose and doesn’t have to struggle to get access to company updates and services. Many of our customers have a large proportion of non-desk workers at distributed locations who would be disconnected without an app. DHL is a great Staffbase customer example. They are rolling out to more than 350,000 employees across hundreds of locations in over 200 countries”.

To that end, Böhringer says that Staffbase disrupts classic top-down intranets, most notably Microsoft SharePoint and the plethora of communications tools that come with Office 365. He argues that these tools are targeted at desktop and knowledge workers and often require training to understand when and where each one should be used.

“Our customers are trying to offer their employees simplicity and coherence; we set ourselves apart in this way and see much better reach and higher levels of engagement because of it,” he says.

Habito, the London startup that has spent the last three years dragging the mortgage process online, is to begin direct lending via its own range of mortgages. Starting with ‘buy to let’ mortgages, the move represents the first time the fintech startup has expanded beyond brokerage after it received regulatory approval to become a mortgage lender in its own right early last year.

Eighteen months in the making, Habito says it has developed a proprietary lending platform from scratch in order to be able to offer its own innovative mortgage products that plug some of the gaps in the current market. Founder and CEO Daniel Hegarty tells me he hopes other lenders will eventually want to use the same rails to launch their own digital lending products but in the meantime the company is excited to launch direct lending.

Longer term, Hegarty says the idea is that a rising tide in terms of customer experience and the speed and certainty smarter use of technology affords, will help to lift all boats within the mortgage lending space.

Habito’s first mortgage product is a range of buy-to-let mortgages, claiming to have the widest selection of Loan to Values and fixed-rate periods currently on the market. Using its proprietary technology, Habito says it aims to cut the timeframe from mortgage application to offer in half.

To do this, the Habito platform integrates with the conveyancing process to add more transparency for the homebuyer, while the number of documents needed is said to be significantly reduced. In addition, the Habito “Instant Decision” is a feature devised to replace the mortgage “Decision in Principle,” which the company says is outdated and often unreliable, without sacrificing time to approval.

“All valuations are instructed automatically, fraud checks are automated and all documentation is handled digitally, meaning that customers won’t have to wait for physical post to progress their application,” says Habito.

It is also worth noting that Habito’s direct mortgages will be Habito branded but will not sit on the company’s balance sheet. The mortgages are being funded via a commitment of £500 million investment provided by an unnamed “leading, FCA-regulated financial institution”.

Habito is also keen to stress that its brokerage will operate as a separate business line and continue to provide “free, impartial, whole-of market mortgage advice to its customers” (as it is regulated to do so). The fact that the FCA approved Habito becoming a lender alongside running its brokerage business is also noteworthy and suggests that the U.K. regulator isn’t concerned about the company’s ability to keeps its business lines segregated. How the wider market views the development by Habito to become a lender and a broker remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Habito says that company buy-to-let and portfolio landlord mortgages will launch later this year. Beyond this, the startup is working with a number of “large financial institutions” to bring a range of residential mortgages to market in the coming months.

One area that Hegarty says is ripe for innovation are mortgages suitable for self-employed people who don’t have a traditional financial footprint. Another opportunity the startup is eyeing up are mortgages with a much longer fixed term, which are more common in other countries but in the U.K. are typically restricted to two to three years.

The race to become the first publicly traded company dedicated to human spaceflight is over, and Virgin Galactic has won.

The company will be listing its shares on the New York Stock Exchange through a minority acquisition made by Social Capital Hedosophia; the special purpose acquisition company created by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya as part of his exploration of alternative strategies to venture capital investing as the head of Social Capital — according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Formed with a $600 million commitment roughly two years ago, the SPAC is expected to make an $800 million commitment to Virgin Galactic, according to the Journal’s reporting.

Unlike other launch companies like Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Virgin Galactic has focused on suborbital launches for conducting experiments and taking tourists up to space. SpaceX is investing more heavily in the development of launch capabilities for lunar and interplanetary travel — and commercial applications like Internet connectivity via satellite.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin also reportedly has plans for space tourism while pursuing several commercial and government launch contracts (and a lunar lander).

Virgin Galactic was initially in discussions with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia for a roughly $1 billion capital infusion, but Virgin Galactic’s billionaire chief executive, Richard Branson, walked away from the deal in the wake of the kingdom’s assassination of Washington Post journalist, Jamal Kashoggi.

That’s when Palihapitiya stepped in, according to the Journal. The billionaire financier needed to do something with the capital he’d raised for the Hedosophia SPAC since the investment vehicles have to make an investment within a two-year timeframe or be wound down.

Likely, the Virgin Galactic business made a tempting target. The company already has roughly $80 million in commitments from people around the world willing to pay $250,000 for the privilege of a suborbital trip to the exosphere.

Spotify’s Lite app is now official. The app has been in beta since last year, and now Spotify is officially releasing it in 36 countries worldwide.

The app is designed to work on patchy or weak internet connections and, at just 10MB, it is small enough to cater to lower-end devices that have limited storage or older phones. Spotify Lite is limited to Android devices running version 4.3 or newer, and it is open to both paying and non-paying users. For those worried about maxing out their data plan, the app comes with an optional limit that can tell you when you are close to hitting that buffer.

Spotify claims that 90 percent of the features of the main app are available in Lite, in particular areas around multiple — including video and cover artist — are omitted as they are not critical to the core experience.

A spokesperson told TechCrunch that, as of now, there are no plans to bring the Lite experience to iOS. That makes sense as the majority of people who would benefit from the stripped-down experience would be Android owners.

The overall goal here is to expand Spotify’s reach beyond the current user base by focusing on emerging markets or older users. The company currently claims 217 million users, of which 100 million are paying customers. For comparison, Apple Music passed 60 million users in June.

India is likely to be a key focus. Spotify introduced Lite in India in June, months after the full service went live in the country in February.

Cecilia Qvist, Global Head of Markets, Spotify (left) annnounced the release of Spotify Lite on stage at Rise in Hong Kong (Photo By David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

According to Google Play Store data, Spotify Lite has been downloaded more than one million times. Expect that numbers to rocket as the company goes to town promoting Lite as an alternative entry point for its service.

Lite apps have been popularized by services such as Facebook, Messenger and YouTube which have tapped demand, particularly in emerging markets where data speeds tend to be inconsistent and lower-end devices are more prevalent.

Global ride-hail startup InDriver launches its app-based service in Kampala (Uganda) this week.

After going live in Nairobi in June—the online taxi company now operates in four African countries: Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and Tanzania

Founded in Russia and now headquartered in New York, InDriver’s mobile-app allows passengers to name their own fare for nearby drivers to accept, decline, or counter. The startup operates in 200 cities, is used by 26 million people, and has raised $15 million in two rounds from Leta Capital, according to a release, Crunchbase, and a company spokesperson.

InDriver entered Latin America and Tanzania in 2018. The startup sees a value proposition for Africa based around urbanization, demographics, and some of the unique characteristics of its platform.

“We think Africa is going to be a big market for us because there’s a lot of cities and high population [areas] that still don’t have access to ride-hail applications,” InDriver’s Chief Marketing Officer Egor Fedorov told TechCrunch on a call.

He believes InDriver can reach an additional market segment in African cities—one that may overlook other ride-hail options that require cards to sign up or don’t feature bidding. The startup’s mobile-app allows for cash-payment and InDriver views itself more as an IT service than a taxi company, according to Federov. The company does not directly finance or brand cars in Africa. InDriver charges a percentage of each ride to generate revenue and doesn’t currently take commission from drivers in Africa, though it does in other markets.

For now, InDriver will stick to car-based taxi service in Africa (with no immediate plans to enter the motorcycle taxi space) or add things it does in other markets, such as truck rental services.

On marketing outreach for Kampal, InDriver will rely primarily on word-of-mouth gained by (what it projects) as cheaper prices and bringing price-negotiation (common to the continent’s taxi markets) to a quick and controlled online process.

InDriver’s Uganda expansion comes at a time when Africa’s ride-hail markets are becoming a multi-wheeled, Pan-African, and global affair.  A lot of VC is accumulating and expansion happening around the continent’s online car taxis, moto-taxi startups, and car and motorcycle delivery-services.

Uber operates in eight African countries and last year joined global ride-hail company Bolt (previously Taxify) to add motorcycle-taxi services on the continent.

On the local level, Ethiopian auto-taxi startup ZayRide announced it will expand to West Africa in August.

Africa’s motorcycle ride-hail market—worth an estimated $4 billion—has also seen a flurry of investment and expansion. Nigeria’s MAX announced a $7 million round backed by Yamaha to expand in West Africa and pilot electric e-motos. Global web-browser company Opera launched its ORide moto-taxi service in Nigeria last month.

And Uganda-based motorcycle ride-hail company SafeBoda expanded into Kenya and recently raised a Series B round, co-led by the venture arms of Germany’s Allianz and Indonesia’s Go-Jek.

So whether by two wheels or four, Africa’s on-demand transit market is moving rapidly. Time, attrition, and burn-rate will tell which startups—including InDriver—can stay in the race for market-share or are forced off the road.