Uber’s bottle neck competitor and the second largest taxi-aggregator in the United States, Lyft Inc. is reportedly raising a whopping sum of $1 billion in a Series F round of funding, as revealed by several document filings unearthed by VC Experts.
Lyft is currently valued at $4.5bn, which is nearly double its earlier valuation in May. The start-up was worth $2.7 billion in May after receiving fresh funds from various companies, of which Rakuten Inc., a Japanese online retailer was a major investor.
Lyft is reportedly offering preferred stock of 37.3 million shares at the rate of $26.79 per share. The fresh round of funding will certainly aid in Lyft’s market expansion and help it ramp up operations to match those of Uber. The start-up currently operates in 150 cities in the U.S.
Lyft’s valuation is nowhere comparable to Uber though, which is already in the process of raising double the amount Lyft is securing in funds. Uber had earlier announced, that at a valuation of $ 62.5 billion it is raising a sum of $2.1billion. Uber’s valuation also happens to be one of the highest for any tech start-up globally, ever.
Combined, the amount of funding flowing into the two of States’ biggest taxi-aggregators – Uber and Lyft – exceeds over $3 billion. Investors indeed hold a positive perception about the taxi-aggregator services and have rarely shied away from investing huge sums in the market. India’s home-grown taxi-aggregator Ola for example, also was at the receiving end of one such investment that amounted to $500 million last month.
The investment will help cement Ola’s dominance in its home turf, whereas the money flowing in for Uber will help expand the former towards global dominance. Uber’s most prominent and largest markets happen to be India and China, where the company has been launching region specific services to please users.
The latest round of investment being pumped into Lyft has actually exceeded company’s own expectations. Lyft had predicted an investment worth $500 million less than a month ago.
Lyft however, has not revealed the exact the amount that has been raised nor the parties involved in the investment round. The new investment will fill in the $127 million set-back faced by Lyft in mid-2015. Lyft had lost the sum on a revenue of $46.7 million, a report confirmed by Bloomberg. Expansion drive though isn’t stopping on that note as the company began offering services in San Francisco, while also achieving a $1 billion run rate on gross revenue
