Fasten your seat belts, Austinites.
The ride-sharing app, "Fasten," is leaving the Texas capitol.
The company said all its ridesharing operations in the United States -- meaning in Austin and Boston -- would shut down as of 12 a.m. Monday, March 5 due to the company being acquired by Vezet Group, one of the top ten ride-hailing companies in the world. Fasten officials said Vezet Group would use the company's brand and technology to grow their business in other parts of the world, but would freeze operations in the U.S.
Fasten's Head of Corporate Communications said the company wasn't able to compete with Uber and Lyft.
The announcement comes one year after the app was named the official rideshare service for South by Southwest.
Co-founders Kirill Evdakov, Vlad Christoff, and Roman Levitskiy released this statement Friday:
We created this business to bring change to the ride-hailing industry. We wanted to help drivers earn more of the fare, and we wanted to give you a better choice. We believe we’ve made real progress with the 5 million rides we’ve completed together.
As we say goodbye, we ask that you make a conscious choice when it comes to ride-hailing. We know why you chose Fasten, and our hope is that you’ll continue to think about the drivers who are doing this to make ends meet and of how rideshare companies treat their people.
Fasten’s mission and model will live on in other markets around the globe, and we’re so proud of the product that we’ve built. Thank you so much for your tremendous support over the last three years. It’s been a great ride.
Kirill Evdakov, Vlad Christoff, and Roman Levitskiy,
Co-founders, Fasten