- Charlotte-based mobility management company Passport announced it raised $65 million in Series D funding
Charlotte-based mobility management company Passport announced it has raised $65 million in a Series D round of funding. New investors Rho Capital Partners, H.I.G. Growth Partners and ThornTree Capital Partners participated in this funding round. Including this round, the company has raised a total of $125 million since it launched in 2010. Previous investors include Bain Capital Ventures, MK Capital, Grotech Ventures, and Relevance Capital also joined the round.
Passport CEO and co-founder Bob Youakim told Crunchbase that the company initially started out as a mobile-based platform for municipalities to directly connect with their customers in order to process mobile parking transactions and to make parking operations easier.
“In the future, almost everyone in the world will live in a city, so there’s no more important challenge to work on than how people move throughout communities and transact with cities,” said Youakim. “We envision a world where mobility is seamless. To bring this vision to life, we are creating an open ecosystem where any entity — a connected or autonomous vehicle, a mapping app, or a parking app — can leverage our transactional infrastructure to facilitate digital parking payments.”
Passport’s enterprise software now serves government entities and universities. And it gives users the option to coordinate “all modes of transportation.” And its platform helps with mobile parking payments, digital parking permits, and enforcement.
Currently, Passport works with over 1,000 municipalities, universities, and private operators in North America and the U.K. in major cities like Chicago, Boston, Austin, Toronto, and London.
Youakim pointed out that the company’s revenue jumped 511% from 2015 to 2018. And Passport also doubled its headcount this year alone and now it has over 300 employees. Plus the company also acquired three companies such as Complus Data Innovations in New York.
With this round of funding, Passport will further invest in its mobility platform in order to enable cities to manage a complex mobility ecosystem.
In conjunction with the funding round, Habib Kairouz from Rho Capital Partners will be joining Passport’s board of directors along with Scott Hilleboe of H.I.G. Capital.
