Taxify started five years ago with a mission to make urban transportation easier and faster. Their first product was a taxi dispatch platform, hence the name. The company, active already in 30 countries and with more than 25 million users, is now making an important shift in its business as it gears up for its next stage of expansion. The company is removing “taxi” from its name and rebranding itself as Bolt – the name it has been using for its new electric scooter service – to highlight the startup’s plan to widen its scope and to cover more than just car-based rides. At the moment, cars may make up the vast majority of Bolt’s service, but it is in the company’s agenda to add more scooters, other individual transport modes and soon also the public transport links.
“We have grown into a much broader transportation platform, providing ride-hailing with cars and motorbikes, as well as scooter sharing,” the company explains the reason to change its name in its blog. “We have come a long way, with more than 25 million people around the globe using Bolt app to move around in their city. But we’re not stopping there! The new name marks an important milestone in our journey to become the #1 ride-hailing app in Europe and Africa,” Markus Villig, the CEO and co-founder of the startup commented to TechCrunch.
Villig also said that the rebrand from Taxify to Bolt is serving a few purposes. The new name „bolt“ implies speed, as well as electricity. According to him, the startup is confident that the future is fully electric and therefore the startup wanted a name that moved them away from the combustion engine.