San Francisco-based ride-sharing service Sidecar on Monday announced a US$15 million funding round that included backing by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson.
The money is expected to be used to help fuel a US-wide expansion of Sidecar, which introduced a ‘shared-ride’ service in San Francisco about four months ago, according to an online post by chief executive Sunil Paul.
“Our drivers and riders have shown the world that people will embrace smart transportation solutions that are affordable and safe,” Paul said.
Sidecar’s long-term goal is to create the largest transportation marketplace in the world by building a system that makes it as affordable to share rides as it is to use public transit, Paul has said.
The service uses a smartphone application to match people looking for rides with nearby drivers who happen to be heading for the same locations. Passengers split costs of trips with drivers.
About 13,000 people requested rides in the month after the service launched launched, the company said, adding that it is matching thousands of riders and drivers weekly.
Previous Sidecar investors Avalon Ventures and Union Square Ventures took part in the latest funding round, which was joined by Virgin Group founder Branson, Paul said.
“Technology has turned transportation on its head,” Branson said in comments posted online by Sidecar.
“It’s fundamentally changing the way we get around. We don’t need to own cars; services like Sidecar can get us around town,” he said.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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