Lyft has acquired and, consequently shut down FinitePath. The startup’s team, which includes Balaji Raghavan and Vinay Kakade, will be joining the ride-sharing service’s own team and will help in expanding its large scale infrastructure and services.
The move comes even as Lyft has gone into overdrive with regards to its global ambitions. The company has committed to launching in more than 100 new markets this year and is already well ahead towards reaching its goal.
Speaking on the topic, Luc Vincent, Lyft’s vice president of engineering said:
We are very excited to have Balaji and Vinay join our team. They have extensive experience building large scale infrastructure and services. We see this experience as playing a critical role in helping us tackle some of the unique challenges we have at Lyft, as well as helping grow the Lyft community.
The companies have not disclosed the financial terms of the deal. However, we do know that FinitePath’s iOS and Android app Trail Answer are shutting down within the next two weeks. The app provides answers to all sorts of questions and professes to set itself apart by providing relevant and concrete solutions.
You can think of it as Quora, except that somewhat more curation takes place on this platform. Meanwhile, Lyft does not appear to have particular interest in the company’s assets. Instead, it is after the employees.
For instance, Raghavan is an ex-Google and served as engineering director for the company in 2015. On the other hand, Co-founder Kakade was the head of engineering at Amazon’s CloudSearch in India. Together, the duo will help Lyft expand its infrastructure to keep pace with its rapid growth in new markets.
