Taxify, a leading European on-demand transportation platform, is changing its name to Bolt in a rebranding exercise that mirrors the company’s wider vision of expanding from ride-hailing with cars and motorbikes, to scooter sharing.
Speaking on the brand overhaul, Markus Villig, CEO and co-founder, Bolt says, “Taxify launched five years ago with a mission to make urban transportation more convenient and affordable. Our first product was a taxi despatch solution that informed the company’s original name”.
Taxify raised $175 million in May last year, at a $1 billion valuation in a deal led by Daimler. It has 25 million registered users across the 30 countries operates in.
The company has made leaps since its inception and is currently working on expanding the scooter sharing service across a number of European cities. “While we’ve made progress on our mission, we have also started to outgrow parts of our brand, including the name. Given our ambition to solve transportation problems on an increasingly broader scale, we want the brand to reflect the company’s future rather than the past.
Our new name ‘Bolt’ stands for fast, effortless movement – exactly what the experience of getting around in a city should be, be it by car, scooter or public transport. It also underscores our belief that the future of transportation will be electric,” Regional Manager for West Africa at Bolt, Uche Okafor, says.
The new brand will gradually roll out across Bolt’s global markets over the following weeks in a user-friendly process that will see the app update automatically.
The service launched in Nigeria in 2017 and operates in Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, Owerri and Benin.
