Rakuten leads USD 530 mln round in Lyft, takes 11% stake

In 2014, Lyft closed a USD 250 million round with participation from Alibaba, techinasia.com reports. The company’s business model, in which ordinary people get paid to ferry passengers in their personal vehicles, occupies a legal grey area in almost every city.

Ridehailing startups collect treasure troves data about maps and traffic patterns. They also might observe how Lyft’s sharing-economy model can be imported and tweaked for Asia, when the timing is right. China’s notable transportation network is the newly-merged Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache, both of which center on taxis, not ordinary people. India’s Ola and Southeast Asia’s GrabTaxi also primarily offer taxi-hails and Japan looks set to see a boom in on-demand cabs thanks to LineTaxi. Peer-to-peer ridesharing, meanwhile, hasn’t yet achieved market dominance (though UberX is available in many Asian cities).

From 2013, Rakuten has made a string of global acquisitions that include chat app Viber, video streamer Viki, ecommerce app Slice, coupon service Ebates, and ereader Kobo. The company also owns several ecommerce properties in Europe, and invests in early-stage companies through Rakuten Ventures.