After seeing its fleet expand from Dallas across the Lone Star state, Alto is hitting the road to launch its services on the West Coast.
The local ride-hailing startup announced making its first move outside of Texas, launching its transportation and delivery services in Los Angeles as it continues plans for nationwide expansion.
"Alto is thrilled to expand to Los Angeles as the first market outside our home state of Texas,” Will Coleman, co-founder and CEO at Alto, told NTX Inno via email. “Safe and consistent rideshare is more important than ever in these times, and we are proud to kick off 2021 with our continued growth into new cities.”
The company said it plans to have “hundreds” of drivers in Los Angeles. June, the company said it had about 150 part- and full-time drivers, all of which are employed directly by Alto.
Alto first launched its services on the streets of Dallas in 2019. It began expanding beyond the city, entering Fort Worth in April and entering Houston in September, where it has about 30 to 40 drivers and other employees at an 1,800 square-foot office space.
Aided by a $6 million funding round it landed at the beginning of last year led by Road Ventures and Frog Ventures, which brought its total to about $20.5 million, Alto has its eyes on more metro areas. Within the next three to four years, the company hopes to be operating in 15 other markets, with its next stop in Austin.
Like many other ride-sharing companies, Alto saw its ridership drop to almost nothing at the beginning of the pandemic, cutting hours for many employees. However, increased safety measures – which Alto strictly enforces, since it owns its fleet – like HEPA air filters, regular temperature checks and gloves allowed it to begin boosting its ridership after the initial lockdown in April.
Since then, Alto has begun exploring different verticals, providing B2B services for car dealerships, opening a food delivery service called The Market, as well as partnering with other local startups to help deliver their products.
As it rolls out its new fleet, it plans to offer similar services in addition to ride-hailing in Los Angeles.
“Los Angeles is an exciting market for us because it has a large and discerning population of ride-share passengers who are increasingly dissatisfied with traditional, contractor-based ride-share models,” Coleman said via email. “We also know that LA customers expect a lot out of the companies that they engage with, which is a great fit for our mission to redefine rideshare.”
Check out a Q&A with Coleman on how Alto plans to navigate the competitive Los Angeles market with California’s new gig worker regulations here.
