Skip to main content

IFC invests in PickMe to improve Sri Lanka’s transportation links

The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is investing $2.5m in Sri Lanka-based ride-hailing company PickMe, whose taxi app allows users to request auto rickshaws and luxury cars. Amena Arif, IFC country manager for Sri Lanka and Maldives, says the country has the potential for a digital start-up ecosystem but has been held back by a lack of global funding. IFC says only 5% of start-ups get cash-for-equity seed funding to raise their first significant round of venture capital. IFC’s venture cap
June 19, 2018 Read time: 1 min
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is investing $2.5m in Sri Lanka-based ride-hailing company PickMe, whose taxi app allows users to request auto rickshaws and luxury cars.


Amena Arif, IFC country manager for Sri Lanka and Maldives, says the country has the potential for a digital start-up ecosystem but has been held back by a lack of global funding.

IFC says only 5% of start-ups get cash-for-equity seed funding to raise their first significant round of venture capital.

IFC’s venture capital group invests in growing companies that offer technologies or disruptive business models focused on emerging markets.

Related Content

  • Considering accessibility costs little and pays dividends for all travellers
    August 8, 2017
    Catering for those with disabilities can be cost-effective and improve services for all travellers, as David Crawford discovers. Clearer understanding of the economic value of accessible transport is essential if we are to speed up the current slow deployment levels, according to the Paris-based International Transport Forum (ITF), which staged a 2016 round table on the ‘Benefits and Costs of Inclusion in Transport’. It wants to see greater availability of data on levels of actual and unmet demand for acces
  • New name offers new solutions
    November 26, 2013
    Pete Goldin examines Nokia’s rationale for combining its location services, digital mapping and other capabilities under the HERE brand. While it has divested itself of its mobile phone business to Microsoft, Nokia has kept hold of its HERE business unit and brand which incorporates the company’s location services with digital mapping and other capabilities. The creation of HERE is much more than rebranding as its services are heading off the map and into the cloud. “HERE offers the first location cloud
  • ITF and FIA team to improve urban road safety
    October 18, 2016
    The International Transport Federation (ITF) and Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) are to launch Safer City Streets, the new global traffic safety network for liveable cities on 18 October during the UN Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador. Road safety is a growing issue for mayors and city managers. Cities address many challenges by working together and learning from each other – but so far not in the field of road safety data. Safer City Streets now fills this gap by linking cities t
  • Plastic is fantastic for payment platform interoperability
    April 2, 2014
    The Sino Visitor Pass aims to promote trade between Singapore and China by making travel easier, as Jon Masters finds out. Singapore has notched up another first in transportation innovation with announcement of a dual-currency payment card in partnership with the province of Guangdong in China. From the middle of 2014, visitors to Singapore and Guangdong will be able to use a ‘Sino Visitor Pass’ to pay for use of public transportation among other things.