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VOI Technology, an e-scooters start-up based in Sweden but with a pan-European ambition, has raised $ 50 million in Series A financing, confirming our previous scoop. As I mentioned earlier, Balderton Capital, a London-based venture capital firm, led the debate alongside LocalGlobe, Raine Ventures and VOI's former sponsor, Vostok New Ventures.
A number of angel investors also participated. They include Cristina Stenbeck, Jeff Wilkes (Amazon), Justin Mateen (co-founder of Tinder), Nicolas Brusson (CEO and co-founder of BlaBlaCar), Sebastian Knutsson (co-founder of King), Spencer Rascoff (CEO of Zillow). and Keith Richman.
A source familiar with VOI's first fundraisers tells me that it's actually two rounds announced at the same time, although VOI and Balderton say that's not the case. The start of the e-scooter had already collected about $ 3 million earlier this year.
What I do know, however, is that the size of this new cycle has grown considerably very late, as VOI continues to gain ground and the cycle has become more competitive with a lot of interest in venture capital. According to my sources, the initial target was $ 15 million with a valuation before the money between $ 35 and $ 40 million. Unfortunately, I could not confirm the new valuation based on this much larger fundraiser. VOI and Balderton declined to comment.
Launched in Stockholm, Sweden in August 2018 by the founders Fredrik Hjelm, Douglas Stark, Adam Jafer and Filip Lindvall, VOI has since expanded to Madrid, Zaragoza and Malaga in Spain. The plan is to use the new funding to continue expanding into new European markets. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and Portugal would launch "in the coming months". The VOI Jobs page reveals that VOI is also recruiting country directors for Denmark, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey and Finland.
Like other electric scooter startups, VOI is positioned as a way to alleviate crowded city centers and reduce pollution. VOI's scooters offer a "clean, efficient, cost-effective, emission-free" alternative in the first and last kilometers. cars and taxis. After downloading the VOI application, simply locate a nearby scooter in the street or via the map of the application, press the 'ride' button, scan the VOI QR code and ride n ' anywhere in town. The company charges € 1 for unlocking and a journey costs € 0.15 per minute.
In just 12 weeks, VOI would have gathered 120,000 users, who made 200,000 trips, traveling 350,000 kilometers. It is said that VOI Europe is the leading e-scooter sharing company.
"We see that we have radically changed user behavior in a very short time," says Fredrik Hjelm, managing director of VOI. "We have changed the way people move, people move themselves. We changed people's mode of transportation almost instantly in cities after trying scooters for the first time. "
He explains that this has resulted in "very high retention rates, recurring use, as well as recommendations from friends".
"I come from northern Sweden, and for me, it's very difficult to understand. It's absurd, why we have so many cars and why our cities are built for cars, taxes and trucks, and not for people, animals, scooters, bikes and light electric vehicles, "explains Hjelm. "It's more of an ideological point of view. For me, the freedom of power of scooters ".
VOI also sets out its "distinctive" European approach to how the company works with municipal authorities. This is very different from Silicon Valley's "ask for forgiveness and not permission" mentality.
"When you read the news, you get the feeling that politicians in the city are against scooters. The reality is reversed, "says Hjelm. "The only thing is that they want to have their say on this issue and how it should be exploited. So we do not find ourselves in a scooter yard situation as in some US cities … Almost all European cities have an ambition or aim to be less dependent on cars and other vehicles running on fossil fuels.
Balderton's entry into the electric scooter market comes after three of London's four largest venture capitalists have already made investments in the United States. Index and Accel supported Bird and Atomico supported Lime.
Last month also saw Northzone's EUR 25 million Series A fundraising campaign in Berlin, with the aim of creating "the bird or lime of Europe", even though it is far from to be obvious that Bird or Lime will not win this title. themselves (which is obviously the bet of Index, Accel and Atomico). And two months ago, Taxify also announced its intention to rent electric scooters under the brand Bolt, launched in Paris but also planning to become pan-European.
This has led some venture capital firms to describe the space of electronic scooters in Europe as a "bloodbath" of imminent venture capital. The idea is that the market has become so competitive so early that a lot of venture capital dollars are going to be spent (and potentially wasted) before it's hard to determine who will be the final winner. This seems quite unusual for Europe, where it is more common for competing venture capital firms to retreat or co-invest one or two of the larger companies (or Rocket Internet) have retired or a better funded US competitor. the horizon – a point that I introduced to Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, partner at Balderton.
"Yes, and I think if we continued doing that as a venture capital community, we would never see $ 1 billion companies coming out of Europe," he says. . "That's why we support VOI. [But] I understand what you are saying: it's against big money. "
Fjeldsoe-Nielsen described the electronic scooters as a great opportunity to change that. Over the past four weeks, VOI has doubled its revenues and Balderton finds the same type of traction and market reaction as Bird and Lime in the United States.
"We think that a big company can come out of Europe," he added.
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