This Promising Uber Rival Just Raised $120 MillionCabify is based in Spain but big in Latin America.
ByDavid Meyer•
This story originally appeared onFortune Magazine
The Spanish Uber competitor Cabify, which is currently expanding in Latin America, has raised a $120 million Series C round of investment.
The round values the on-demand ride-hailing firm at $320 million. It was led by the Japanese web giant Rakuten, which put a fresh $92 million into Cabify -- on top of the $3 million it invested last year. Before Wednesday, Cabify had reportedly raised less than $30 million.
Cabify operates in Spain, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Colombia. Indeed, in Latin America it stands alongside Uber as afocus for the ireof traditional cab companies.
According to theWall Street Journal,乐天Cabify感兴趣的拉丁美洲presence and "willingness to work with regulators." Cabify, meanwhile, is keen on forging alliances with car manufacturers, althoughTechCrunch reportedthat no such companies participated in the current funding round.
Rakuten is also an investor in Lyft, Uber's best-known competitor. It participated in a much larger$1 billion roundfor Lyft at the start of this year, which valued Lyft at $5.5 billion. Uber raised funding at the end of 2015 at a valuation of $62.5 billion, although investment firm T. Rowe Price recentlymarked down its Uber investmentby 6 percent.
Cabify remains small fry on the international scale for now. That said, Rakuten clearly sees something in its regional strength.
Cabify CEO Juan de Antonio told TechCrunch that he was open to striking partnerships with other big regional players.
There is indeed a biganti-Uber alliance这需要在迪迪Kuaidi(中国),Lyft(美国),Ola (India) and GrabTaxi (South-East Asia). Perhaps Cabify could end up filling the gap in that alliance for Latin America.
