Amidst acquisition talks with global ride-hailing company Uber, Dubai-based Careem has acquihired bus shuttle service app Commut, a Hyderabad-based startup.
Careem will only take over Commut’s talent and technology, while customers and drivers will become part of another bus aggregator Shuttl, one of the rivals of Commut in this space.
The acquisition deal, which has not been disclosed yet, will help Careem to foray into mass transport across many cities in the Middle East and Egypt, reports Bloomberg.
Entrackr reached out to Commut and Shuttl regarding the deal. We’ll update the post as responses come in.
Launched in 2015 by Charan Thota, Hemanth Jonnalagadda, Prasanth Garapati, Sandeep Kachavarapu, and others, Commut has a fleet of over 80 buses in 100 plus routes in Hyderabad.
The startup claims to have completed 1 million rides since its inception and has raised over $200,000 from angel investors such as 50K Ventures.
In India, shuttle services is largely dominated by Gurugram-based Shuttle and ZipGo. In July, Shuttl had scooped up $11 million Series B round led by Amazon India, Amazon Alexa Fund and Dentsu Venture followed by ZipGo, which had raked in $44 million Series B round from Essel Infra.
For Careem, this is the first instance when it’s dealing with any Indian startup. Last week, it was reported that Uber could acquire it for over $2 billion.
