Funding has been put forward by Union Square Ventures who have a proven record of investment including Twitter and Tumblr. Among other investors is entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson.
The app is used to 'hail' or book a taxi through your smartphone and has been used in over a million journeys in London to date. Nearly half of London's taxi drivers have made use of the system and 225,000 potential customers have used the service.
With Hailo collecting a 10% commission on bookings and the total bookings amounting to around $100m the company has made a good start in the industry.
The app will incorporate a $1.50 hailing charge in New York as cab fares are about half that of London.
There has been a development in the apps US expansion with a former vice-president of Starbucks selected as the US-based president and chief. Negotiations have also taken place for mobile phone carriers in the US to back the app, however, nothing has been announced as of yet.
Hailo's chairman and co-founder Ron Zeghibe said: “Japan’s market alone is worth $25bn and Tokyo weighs in at twice the market value of either London or New York. We will become Japan’s first end-to-end mobile taxi app.”
Regardless of whether the average Joe has heard of or made use of the app the calibre of investors in the expanding project speaks volumes for the companies future.
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