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The Marker reported today that Moovit, an Israeli travel assistant app aimed at public transit users, recently raised $50 million in its latest funding round. The transportation app is used in more than 400 cities and has 12 million users worldwide, 1 million of whom are in Israel. Moovit employs similar crowdsourced tactics as Israeli superstar transportation app and unicorn Waze, which was sold to Google for around $1 billion in 2013. The app informs riders of the most convenient routes in real-time based on users' reporting and live traffic information.
According to the Marker the company, founded by CEO Nir Erez, Roy Bick, and Yaron Evron, is now valued somewhere between $300 and $450 million. Moovit has made a lot of progress since last year's $28 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital, when the company was only valued at $50 million. It is still unknown which investors participated in this round of funding, but Sequoia, Gemini, and Israeli BRM Funds have joined past funding rounds.
The competition
Moovit's main competition comes from apps such as Google Maps, Transit, Citymapper, and Google Maps. Google Maps is clearly the most serious competitor because it integrated Waze's functions into the app earlier this year. It is unclear to this reporter why Moovit would garner such a sizable investment in the wake of such competition, but she looks forward to seeing Moovit move it – and fast.
