Inspiring stories: Mihai Rotaru, co-founder & CEO of Clever Taxi

Seven years since its foundation, Clever Taxi was taken over last year by Mytaxi, the e-hailing player controlled by German carmaker Daimler, in a deal that improved Romania’s tech image and its entrepreneurship scene. Mihai Rotaru, co-founder and CEO of Clever Taxi, describes 2017 as “the most challenging yet prolific year”. He says that the firm’s “boldest and most game-changing move” was joining the Mytaxi and Daimler family.

“We joined forces with a European leader who shares our vision of the transportation market and that came with many changes. In our case, these changes represented a huge step forward, a more dynamic approach to the market, and we almost doubled in size; the Clever Taxi team has doubled its size in the last six months. We are still close to the startup ecosystem,” says Rotaru.

As developer of the taxi hail app Clever Taxi, the company is navigating the myriad of challenges posed by the unstable regulatory framework and the ongoing transition of Romania to the digital economy. “In spite of the well-known obstacles that appeared in the way, we have remained faithful to our main goal since the very beginning: offering the safest, most reliable and legal form of urban mobility solutions. We are constantly improving our platform, investing all of our resources to make it as user-friendly as possible and to increase the quality of experience for each of our 700,000 users,” concluded Rotaru.