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Kakao Mobility, the South Korea-based mobility as a service (MaaS) startup behind Kakao T, a ride-hailing app, stated it has raised a further $55 million (65 billion gained) from strategic investor GS Retail. This brings its complete raised to about $941.4 million (1.11 trillion gained) and values it at greater than $4.2 billion, a spokesperson at Kakao Mobility confirmed.
On Monday, South Korea’s GS Retail introduced that spent $55 million for its 1.3% stake in Kakao Mobility.
The most recent financing occasion comes on the heels of a sequence of funding rounds that embody $200 million from the Carlyle Group in February, $478 million from Google in March and $111 million led by TPG in June. Earlier backers additionally embody South Korea’s GS Caltex, GS Power and LG Corp, the corporate stated.
Kakao Mobility was valued at $3.4 billion (4.09 trillion gained) as lately as its $84.9 million funding (100 billion gained) from LG Corp in July, in response to the spokesperson. The spokesperson stated that the corporate will presumably increase further funding rounds previous to its deliberate preliminary public providing between 2022 and the primary half of 2023.
Kakao Mobility’s sister firms, Kakao Financial institution and Kakao Pay, listed in August and November, respectively.
The startup will use the recent capital to advance its AI-powered mobility platform and gas autonomous driving expertise growth. The strategic partnership with GS Retail permits Kakao Mobility to enter the logistics and last-mile supply enterprise utilizing Kakao Mobility’s transportation administration system (TMS) expertise that gives optimum routes for supply automobiles. Subsequent yr, the 2 firms additionally plan to launch a pet taxi service, which permits pet homeowners to make use of taxis with out placing their pets in carriers.
Kakao Mobility, which launched its taxi-hailing service in 2015, was spun off from South Korea’s largest messaging app operator Kakao Corp in 2017 to broaden into bike rental, designated driving, car parking zone search service and navigation companies. Kakao Mobility can also be creating autonomous driving expertise. In March, it obtained permission from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOTIE) to function its autonomous driving automobile, which is in a pilot undertaking, for the following 5 years, the corporate spokesperson stated.
Kakao Mobility’s ride-hailing app has greater than 30 million registered customers, with 230,000 taxi drivers registered on its platform, the spokesperson famous.
In line with an trade supply, the corporate posted $237 billion in income as of 2020 and expects to generate income in 2022.
“Kakao Mobility is a number one startup within the mobility trade with huge information and autonomous driving expertise. We count on to offer new [mobility infrastructure] expertise to our customers by the strategic partnership,” stated SungHwa Lee, head of company enterprise capital at GS Retail.
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