As the German car giant Volkswagen places a huge bet on the future of personal transport, the company has put $300 million into Israeli taxi start-up Gett.

The German carmaker’s investment had been preceded just a few months ago by General Motors injected investment of $500 million into US ride-hailing app Lyft. Volkswagen’s investment is more than doubles the amount of funding that has been so far raised by Gett.

The two companies would get together to form a “strategic partnership” to share data and work on future projects under the deal.

While Gett drivers will be offered discounts on VW cars to use as taxis, the German group will offer on-demand ride services to business customers.

A long-term decline in personal car ownership in the industry is anticipated by some will be brought about by the rise of “mobility service” providers such as Uber and even the car makers are grappling with the rising popularity of such services.

While General Motors and VW have now both taken huge financial investments directly into ride hailing technology start-ups, a number of car companies have launched or are testing ride-sharing schemes.

The company wants “to generate a substantial share of its future sales revenue from new business models focused on mobility services”, VW says.

The partnership “marks the first milestone for the Volkswagen Group on the road to providing integrated mobility solutions”, said Chief executive Matthias Müller.

“We aim to become one of the world’s leading mobility providers by 2025,” he added.

The emissions scandal, where it admitted to installing cheating software on 11m cars worldwide, is still troubling the carmaker as it continues to grapple with the scandal and its fallouts.

The German automaker said that it was “on track” to offer a technical solution for the vehicles by the deadline of June 21 even as the company has offered to buy back almost 500,000 cars in the US.

Gett has signed up about 100,000 cars globally with more than 11,000 cars in London and is the largest taxi-hailing company in Europe. Only established fleets and drivers, such as black cabs in London are used by it unlike Uber and Lyft. Its technology also extends to logistics and deliveries.

The Volkswagen investment would allow the company to expand its business in New York and move into more cities, Shahar Waiser, Gett’s founder and chief executive, told the Financial Times.

Even though the company declined to comment on its valuation, analysts say that the investment brings the total funds raised by the company to more $520m.

The initial name of the company was GetTaxi when it was set up by Waiser in 2011. However as the company moved into delivery services, the name was changed. Everything from pizza to flowers to champagne can be ordered by Gett customers using the service.

Almost a third of the company’s revenues come from corporate customers.

While offering price cuts that have attracted millions of customers, Uber, which has raised $10bn that allows it to expand quickly worldwide, is the main competitor for Gett in this sector.

(Adapted from CNBC)