Türkiye’s leading mobility app Martı and U.S. startup Zoba, the world’s leader in fleet optimization solutions for two-wheeled electric vehicle operations, announced recently that Martı has acquired all of the intellectual property and software assets of Boston-based Zoba.

Martı expects to use AI-powered optimization technology to drive enhancements across two-wheeled electric vehicles and ride-hailing operations, to increase its ridership and reduce operational costs, the company said.

Founded by Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduates, Zoba’s AI-powered SaaS platform and dynamic fleet optimization algorithms are expected to enable two-wheeled electric vehicle operators to generate more revenue and reduce their field operations costs.

Leveraging proprietary demand forecasting algorithms, Zoba dynamically optimizes where vehicles are deployed and when operational tasks, such as battery swaps, rebalance and pick-ups, occur to maximize ridership and minimize vehicle operational inefficiencies.

The acquisition is part of Martı’s focus on creating operational efficiencies in its two-wheeled electric vehicle operations, which include a fleet of over 40,000 e-bikes, e-mopeds and e-scooters, according to the firm.

The company embarked on its operational efficiency-enhancing projects in 2023 and is further building on its efforts in 2024.

The acquisition follows a pilot project Martı completed with Zoba in October and November 2023, in which the use of Zoba software to optimize Martı’s vehicle deployment locations increased ridership of Martı vehicles and had a positive contribution to profitability.

"As part of our efforts to increase revenue and reduce the costs of our two-wheeled electric vehicle operations, we performed pilot projects with several optimization software providers. We achieved the best results using Zoba’s software, and are excited to bring onboard this best-in-class software to increase the availability of our vehicles for our riders and reduce our field operations costs," said Oğuz Alper Öktem, CEO of Martı.

"While Zoba’s software was originally built to optimize two-wheeled electric vehicle operations, we plan to further develop the operations of our ride-haling business from its solid base."

"Zoba’s software is expected to serve as the foundation for the continuous improvements we make to critical components of our ride-hailing business, including our rider-driver matching algorithm and our dynamic pricing engine."

Founded in 2018, Martı is Türkiye’s leading mobility app, offering multiple transportation services to its riders. It operates a ride-hailing service that matches riders with car and motorcycle drivers and offers a large fleet of rental e-mopeds, e-bikes and e-scooters.