Citymapper wants to remain independent, but needs money. Google and Apple could have been customers, but it will ultimately be another American who will soon recover the assets of the London company. It’s called Via, and offers an application to meet all transport-related needs in cities. With Citymapper, Via will collect a community of 50 million users and a phenomenal amount of data, particularly in Europe.
From point A to point B, Citymapper users can see at a glance which means of transport is the fastest, its route and its cost. Over time, the application has also been opened up at the request of those who travel on foot or by bicycle. From this development, the application has gradually gleaned shares of the cake in which Google Maps was crunching to the fullest.
Its last very practical feature available: the possibility of keeping those close to you informed of our journey by sharing our location with them.
Created in 2011, the application received a very good reception from investors, especially in 2016 when its growth began to surge. But the strategy of its founder Azmat Yusuf has never been to grow as quickly as possible and at all costs. This is why Citymapper took time before opening new cities. According to him, it was impossible to be available everywhere without having a full knowledge of each city to offer the best advice on routes.
“So the number of cities is not the goal. The goal is basically to do a great job”explained a few years ago Azmat Yusuf, relayed by Tech Crunch. This is also why advertising has been slow to arrive and it is only today, with the financial difficulties of many tech companies, that Citymapper needs to better remunerate itself – and find a buyer. Fighting market consolidation would be a mistake in view of the giants which the government too. For each peripheral use case, a giant: Uber, Google Maps, Waze, Blablacar…
Concretely in its accounts, the losses recorded have widened… and since 2021, everything is more secret. Since the company is private, it hasn’t leaked numbers since, leaving the general public with the number of 50 million users and an operating loss of more than 9.2 million euros.
The future Citymapper
So with its takeover by the American company Via, Citymapper will be able to save itself from this difficult situation financially and this impasse on the model. But what benefits will users be able to derive from it? In a statement, its CEO Daniel Ramot said he plans to go further with Citymapper by strengthening communication between cities, transport services and the application to offer customers more detailed real-time information. In the event of disturbances, in the event of delays, in the event of strikes or deviations, for example.
User loyalty and the database could also prove to be a luxury in order to be able to measure where tourists go, at what time and over what period, in order to reinforce the various transport services at these points. The kind of information that companies like Uber would likely pay top dollar for…
