Australian taxi app Ingogo gets new funding, eyes listing
Ingogo, the Australian start-up behind the mobile taxi-booking app of the same name, has raised a A$3.4 million ($3.1 million) from a group of PE investors ahead of a listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) next year.
The investment - which values the Sydney-based enterprise at A$25 million - came from 14 backers including private equity fund Wilbow Group, UBS Australian Small Companies Fund and an unidentified Melbourne family. Ingogo has now raised a total of A$7.5 million.
It received A$1 million in August from Pacific Venture Advisors' Vikram Mehta and Raj Dalal, Alceon co-founder Trevor Loewensohn, Victor Gomes and Zac Rosenberg. Other previous investors include MYOB co-founder Brad Shofer and Netus founders Daniel Petre and Alison Deans.
Ingogo users can call a taxi and pay for the ride via the app, while the firm has also rolled out about 1,000 payment terminals that allow drivers to take payments for rides not taken using the app. The company intends to break even early next year and then list in mid to late 2014.
The Ingogo app has been downloaded 70,000 times since its launch and claims to be a competitor to the incumbent Cabcharge payment system. However, it is not the only start-up in the space with a mobile app solution.
Another local rival is goCatch, which claims 200,000 downloads and 15,000 registered drivers. It recently raised A$3 million from investors including James Packer and SEEK co-founder Paul Bassat.
Silicon Valley-based Uber, which also provides apps for upmarket taxis in Sydney and Melbourne. raised $258 million from Google in September, valuing the company at $3.5 billion.
"You're looking at an industry that hasn't been disrupted to date - newspapers, music and a range of other industries have," Hamish Petrie, managing director of Ingogo told the Australian Financial Review. "It's really the development of apps and mobile payments that's brought that opportunity forward. You wouldn't have been able to do this 3-4 years ago because the technology wasn't right."
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