Bolt (2019)Copied

Taxify, founded in Estonia five years earlier and backed by Didi and Daimler, had grown to 25 million users in 30 countries, and its chief executive and co-founder Markus Villig described it as the clear number two in European ride-hailing after Uber. But the name tied it to taxis. The company was adding scooters and other personal transport, and Villig told TechCrunch it planned to add public transport links too. The old name, he said, was too restrictive.

Bolt was already the name of its new electric scooter service. Villig said the word suggests speed as well as electricity, and the company was bullish that the future is fully electric and wanted a name that moved it away from the combustion engine. Bolt's regional manager in Ukraine, Taras Potichny, told MMR the team had searched for a name that would land in all 30 markets, which is hard when words sound better in some languages than others, and that the rebrand and all creative were developed entirely in-house.

The change was announced on 6 March 2019, as the company opened talks on a new funding round after a 175 million dollar raise at a one billion dollar valuation in 2018. Proto reported the new visual identity would be introduced gradually over the following weeks.

Its biggest open problem was London, where Taxify had launched in 2017 via a small licensed firm and was shut down by regulators after three days.

As naming goes, it is excellent: short, international, verb-like and future-proof for a multi-modal business. Doing it in-house kept it fast and cheap. The visual identity matters less than the word, and the word did exactly what Taxify could not.