TRANSPORT
Taxify bets on motorised rickshaws in East Africa
The Estonian ride-hailing company has picked off business from Uber in central and eastern Europe and major African cities
Nairobi — Taxify, an Estonian ride-hailing company aiming to take on Uber in emerging markets, will invest millions of euro in East Africa in the next five years with a strategy focused on motorised rickshaws and motorcycles, it said on Thursday. The company, which already operates in five cities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and will continue to offer regular car rides, said it saw the best opportunity for growth via taxi services in locally popular forms of motorised transport. In East Africa, that means "boda bodas" and "bajajis", also called "tuk tuks" — local terms for motorcycles and rickshaws, respectively. "Our focus is on providing the most appropriate means of transport for the customers and in East Africa we can see that boda bodas are getting the highest value for us," Karl Aru, Taxify’s expansion manager for Africa, said in an interview. Taxify has picked off business from Uber in central and eastern Europe and major African cities. It raised $175m in May in a funding r...
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