Citymapper President Omid Ashtari is leaving the company to sign up for marketplace analysis start-up StreetBees, in accordance to people today acquainted with the situation.
Ashtari, also Citymapper’s head of business enterprise, has been with the urban navigation start off-up for in excess of six years, building him one particular of the longest serving employees.
Citymapper did not immediately answer to CNBC requests for remark.
His departure arrives following what was characterized as a slipping out among himself and Azmat Yusuf, Citymapper’s CEO and founder, according to two former Citymapper staff who requested to continue to be anonymous given the mother nature of the conversations.
“Omid experienced been at Citymapper because the early days and generally employed to be Az’s suitable-hand male, but they had a big slipping out at some place in the last few of yrs, so when I was there they would barely discuss to each other except to make dismissive comments,” one of them said.
The other said: “Matters ended up strained in between them when I was there.”
Ashtari has been an trader and non-executive director at StreetBees due to the fact September 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He is comprehended to have handed in his see at Citymapper close to April and is envisioned to leave in the future thirty day period or two.
Ahead of signing up for Citymapper, Ashtari used seven years at Google, and two and a fifty percent decades at Foursquare, the place he was the taking care of director of Europe.
Citymapper’s application gives transportation possibilities for 42 cities globally like London, New York, Moscow, Boston, Seattle, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong and Melbourne. The application constantly seems in the top rated 10 free navigation apps in the App Store and the Google Play retail outlet.
Citymapper has not had an apparent income stream for substantially of its daily life. Even so, it has experimented with quite a few solutions more than the previous couple of yrs which includes a “wise” bus provider and a “Citymapper Go” that can be used to accessibility transportation across London.
The bus company — known as Smartbus, then SmartRide, then Journey — was launched in 2017 and terminated in 2019, though the Citymapper Pass life on.
Citymapper’s most new company accounts show that it has racked up losses in extra of £20 million.
The organization is on the hunt for a consumer, in accordance to a Sky Information report from January. Apple, Google, and Uber have all been linked to a Citymapper acquisition at one particular stage or another but a sale has never gone by way of.
The firm elevated a $10 million series A spherical led by Balderton Money in 2014 and a $40 million sequence B spherical led by Index Ventures and Balderton in 2016.
Previously this week, Ashtari told CNBC that Citymapper had raised yet another spherical of capital from exterior traders.
Citymapper and StreetBees did not straight away react to CNBC’s ask for for comment.