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Aditya Hadi Pratama · · 1 min readUber buys Hong Kong taxi app amid controversy around legality
“US-based ride hailing service Uber has acquired HKTaxi, Hong Kong’s most popular taxi app, in a move that will push it even deeper into the local cab market,” South China Morning Post reported.
Details:
- The Uber and HKTaxi ride-hailing apps will continue to operate separately for now, though they will work together to explore collaborative models that could create a better experience for passengers and drivers. Neither company disclosed the financial terms of the transaction.
- Since launching in 2013, HKTaxi has been downloaded more than 2 million times and has more than 70,000 registered cab drivers.
Dive deeper:
- Although Uber has had operations in Hong Kong for seven years, its private ride-hailing services in the city-state are still not legal without a hire-car permit.
- Last year, Uber announced that it was prepared to shift its Asia-Pacific headquarters from Singapore to Hong Kong if its operations were legalized in the Chinese special administrative region. However, the firm later changed course and decided to keep its headquarters in Singapore until at least the end of 2022.
Editing by Collin Furtado
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