In the ride-hailing business world, $8 million capital funding is not a big amount
But for the four-year-old Splyt, the amount is enough for the onset of an international roaming ride-hailing business model that connects all the world’s ride-hailing applications in one platform.
Splyt, this week, closed an $8 million funding round participated by the top Southeast Asian ride-hailing app – Grab. The mogul even went out to become Splyt’s partner – forming a new on-demand partnership trio with Splyt, Alipay, and Grab in the mix.
What is Splyt?
Splyt is a UK based company which has a dream of connecting the world’s on-demand ride-hailing ecosystem. It operates with the intent to give the ease of booking rides through one application to global travelers.
This integration is already there in case of Alipay for Southeast Asia. The payment app’s users of Southeast Asia are able to book Grab rides without having to download the Grab app on their devices.
What is Splyt’s Role in it all?
Splyt will not be visible on the consumers’ ends. It will work in the backend acting as an interconnecting service. It will be providing connections to several ride-hailing services outside their geographical markets but outside of it, they will enable other applications access to ride-hailing booking functionalities.
Talking about Splyt’s role as an integrator, Splyt CEO Philipp Mintchin said “ “We are here to partner and benefit each other rather than to try to steal a fleet and run our own app, we are not all of a sudden going to influence the partners we work with… the partners make decisions.”
The main part of the offering that Splyt wishes to offer runs on partnership. Strengthening it, Splyt has also partnered with Ctrip – the Chinese travel app and Careem – the Middle-East on-demand ride application, Gett, and Cartrawler.
The partnership that Splyt is working with gives it an entry into over 2000 cities. And the recent Grab deal will help not just Splyt but also Ctrip and Alipay enter the Southeast Asia ride-hailing ecosystem.
While off to a slow start, Splyt is witnessing their growth getting doubled on a weekly basis. In fact, in some areas, the service is already seeing a 90% repeat use via their partnered applications.
Although it’s soon to comment or envision but it seems like Splyt is our one hopeful ray of light that would make it possible for globe travelers to move across the world.
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