Kakao Mobility buys UK ride-hailing startup Splyt for global biz

South Korea’s Kakao Mobility Corp. said on Wednesday it has acquired the British ride-hailing startup Splyt, marking the first overseas takeover in its push to expand its global business.

South Korea's top taxi-hailing app operating unit of domestic mobile giant Kakao Corp. aims to accelerate its global expansion with Splyt’s technology to connect mobility services worldwide. Kakao Mobility and Splyt have already been cooperating since 2019 to allow South Korean to use ride-hailing services in 32 countries such as Japan.

“We will take a step forward in overseas markets through closer cooperation in the future,” said Kakao Mobility Joint CEO Alex Ryu.

Neither Kakao Mobility nor Splyt unveiled details of the acquisition such as the value of the deal. The UK startup earlier raised money from Softbank Group Corp. and Grab Holdings Inc.

Kakao Mobility has been actively expanding its presence in the global market since last year with its own service in other countries or through mobility roaming services -- allowing ride-hailing users to seamlessly access other platforms.

The company applied the technology infrastructure of Kakao T, South Korea’s most popular taxi-hailing app, to Guam in 2022, while establishing a local service platform in Laos earlier this year.

MOBILITY ROAMING

Splyt founded in 2015 is an application programming interface startup in the mobility sector. It connects different mobility apps to allow users to enjoy other services through one app without downloading individual apps. A Kakao T app user can call a cab in Vietnam through Grab’s service without its super-app, for example.

Splyt, whose clients include Uber Technologies Inc., Grab., Cabify, Trip.com, Booking.com, Alipay, WeChat, Binance and others, helps an app for a specific country expand its presence in other nations in cooperation with other apps.

About 2 billion people in 150 countries are using apps connected through Splyt-enabled partnerships. Kakao Mobility expects the user base to help secure local supply networks for business expansions in each country.

The acquisition incorporated Splyt under Kakao Mobility with about 30 staff of the UK startup including executives joining the South Korean company. The deal may affect the nature of Splyt, which did not belong to a specific company but served as a “neutral zone” among different platform operators, thus hurting its business, some industry sources said.

Kakao Mobility, however, said the acquisition is expected to improve Splyt’s financial stability and help attract new partners.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.