Israeli B2B ride-hailing service Gett raises $200M in a mix of debt and equity at a $1.5B valuation, aims for an IPO by Q1 of 2020
As Uber gears up for an IPO, one of its smaller rivals has raised some money as it prepares to take its own turn on the public market.
Context & Ripple Effects
This round caps a long private run for Gett: Volkswagen's $300M investment in 2016, the acquisition of rival Juno for $200M in 2017, and an $80M VW-led raise in 2018 at ~$1.4B that came bundled with a promise of profitability by early 2019. A March report had already flagged listing plans on either the London Stock Exchange or in Israel.
The timing is deliberate — Gett is raising as Uber heads to its own IPO, and the $200M debt-and-equity mix nudges the valuation only from ~$1.4B to $1.5B. What follows in the corpus matters more than the headline number: the Q1 2020 target slips, another $100M arrives in mid-2020 (total raised: $750M), and Gett eventually goes public via a SPAC merger at ~$1.1B — below this round's price.
First-order effects
- Gett gets the capital to fund its push to profitability and its Q1 2020 IPO window, while existing investors like VW accept a valuation that has moved just ~7% since the 2018 round.
- Corporate customers booking rides through Gett's consolidated taxi, limousine, and ride-hailing platform are the bet here — the raise doubles down on the B2B niche where Gett isn't fighting Uber, Lyft, and Didi head-on.
Second-order effects
- Uber's IPO resets the benchmark for every sub-scale ride-hailing player: Gett must show a credible path to public markets or face the consolidation logic it already exercised on Juno.
- Debt entering the raise structure signals that equity investors won't keep funding the gap between Gett's burn and its profitability timeline at rising prices — pricing power shifts toward whoever underwrites the bridge.
Third-order effects
- The pattern holds in the corpus: the promised IPO date passes, fresh capital arrives instead, and the eventual exit comes via SPAC at a markdown to the private mark — evidence that late-stage ride-hailing valuations set in private rounds don't survive contact with liquidity events.
- If second-tier ride-hailing firms can't clear the public bar, the market structurally consolidates into a handful of global consumer platforms plus focused B2B operators, with SPACs and trade buyers absorbing the rest.
The trend: Ride-hailing's second tier is learning that profitability pledges and private valuations don't guarantee public exits, pushing sub-scale players toward SPAC mergers, down-rounds, and consolidation.