Bosch’s Splitting Fares seeks bolt-ons, CEO says
01 MAY 2018
Splitting Fares (SPLT), a Detroit-based carpooling application provider that was acquired in February by Germany-based Robert Bosch, is in talks with potential targets that offer complementary technology, said CEO Anya Babbitt.
The companies in question have raised “very little capital and believe that consolidation of other carpooling apps is the only way to succeed,” said Babbitt, 34, who co-founded SPLT in 2014 with Chief Technology Officer Yale Zhang.
SPLT focuses on employee carpooling for corporations, as well as group carpooling for colleges and hospitals. Its services are meant to facilitate commutes in cities that suffer from congestion, particularly those with limited public transit, said Babbitt. The service also cuts parking costs down significantly for corporations, and is unique for not charging rider-driver fees, she added.
Ideal targets would be either based in Latin America or focused on growing rideshare programs there, said Babbitt. In the US, it is looking for non-emergency medical transport technology companies that have experience working with the Department of Transportation and other government groups.
Once focused exclusively on car-sharing, the SPLT program now allows for reserving seats on buses. “People were afraid to wait for buses to arrive, but now we can notify passengers exactly when the bus is coming,” Babbitt explained. As such, it could pursue microtransit companies focused on optimizing bus routes, she added.
Brazil, Singapore, Spain and Italy are examples of countries that SPLT wants to penetrate, potentially through M&A, as they are particularly congested and in need of ridesharing services, said Babbitt. It also wants to bulk up its UK and Germany presence, via deals or organically, she added. SPLT, with 25 employees, also has operations in Atlanta, Austin, Texas; Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Monterrey, Mexico; New York, Portland, Oregon; and San Francisco.
Conversations with prospective targets are in preliminary stages. Its law firm is Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, she said.
Because SPLT is 100% owned by Bosch, the parent can fund purchases of both transformative and tuck-in targets, said the CEO. Terms of the deal were undisclosed. But SPLT, which does not disclose its revenue, will likely go after smaller businesses, she maintained.
Bosch began using SPLT’s rideshare options for its Mexican employees in 2016. Talks about a potential acquisition got serious in 2017, Babbitt said. Prior to its acquisition, the company had raised USD 1.5m via several seed funding rounds.
“We had other strategic groups throughout the year interested in us, earlier than Bosch, in the Midwest and California,” she added. “But none of those would have let us preserve our team and operate independently.”
One of SPLT’s more memorable milestones occurred after BMW [ETR:BMW] began offering employees company cars, which rapidly increased rideshare requests, she recalled.
It has an exclusive partnership with Lyft, offering emergency rides home if a customer’s carpool falls through. It also provides non-emergency carpool services for the elderly, allowing hospitals to schedule rides for patients and increasing the percentage of on-time arrivals, said Babbitt.
“We want the experience outside the hospital, like waiting for pickups, to be just as excellent as the hospital treatment, since hospitals get graded on outside as well as inside services,” she noted.
Other key customers include Magna International [TSE:MG], Honda [TYO:7267] and DTE Energy [NYSE:DTE].
Asked if SPLT was targeting small regions that also have limited public transit, Babbitt replied, “We have clients in Ohio, South Carolina and North Carolina, where there’s plenty of cornfields and long stretches of highway but no buses in sight.”
“I won’t name the client,” she added, “but there was one guy walking an hour and a half to work every day barefoot and now he has a ride. Some people are meeting and getting married because of our platform!”