Israeli cab hailing app raises $150 million to take on Uber and Lyft

Tired of the Uber and Lyft drama? There’s another taxi app you should be paying attention to. GetTaxi, also known as Gett, just announced a big $150M funding round, reports Israeli news site Globes. The announcement comes two months after competing service Uber raised $1.2 billion in funding. Taxi hailing is the hot new venture. Much of the attention has centered on the drama between Uber and Lyft, and possible attempts at sabotage. Uber employees have been reportedly scheduling car rides with other services like Lyft and Gett, then canceling them. Gett has taken something of a back seat to all the publicity.

While Uber and Lyft were busy with their pissing match this week, another taxi startup just announced a new mega funding round. GetTaxi, an Israel-based taxi startup, announced Wednesday that it has raised $25 million of a larger $150 million Series D round of funding that it expects to close by the end of this year. Once closed, that will bring GetTaxi’s total funding to more than $200 million. The company’s plan is to use the additional funding to help fuel its expansion in cities throughout Europe and to launch an ride option for businesses in New York. It already serves consumers in New York, under the name Gett. “While most other companies in our space are losing money, GetTaxi is already profitable in 22 out of the 24 cities we operate in and will become profitable at the group level in early 2015,” Shahar Waiser, founder and CEO of GetTaxi, said in a statement. The taxi startup race has sped up in recent months with a number of new entrants raising significant funding rounds to capture key markets.