Sweden-based electric scooter company Voi Technology has announced it raised $30 million in funding. Existing investors Vostok New Ventures, Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe, and Raine Ventures participated in this round. New investors Project A and Creandum have also joined this round. And several angel investors that joined include Cristina Stenbeck (Kinnevik), Diego Piacentini (former SVP at Amazon and VP at Apple), Justin Mateen (Tinder co-founder), Nicolas Brusson (BlaBlaCar co-founder and CEO), Sujay Tyle (Frontier Car Group CEO and co-founder), Christian Leone (Luxor Capital founder), Sujay Jaswa (WndrCo founder), and Spencer Rascoff (former Zillow CEO).
VentureBeat pointed out that this is a “top up round” and it comes only three months after the company brought in a $50 million Series A round. And just a few months before the Series A round, Voi secured a $3 million seed round. With this funding round, Voi is going to double down on research and development initiatives and continue expanding across Europe including Italy, Germany, Norway, and France.
The “last mile” electric scooter market has been heating this past year. Last month, Lime raised $310 million at a $2.4 billion valuation. And Ford Motor Company acquired Spin for a reported $100 million in November 2018. Bird has raised more than $400 million and Uber acquired JUMP Bikes.
Founded in August 2018 by Fredrik Hjelm, Douglas Stark, Adam Jafer and Filip Lindvall, Voi rolled out in Stockholm in August. And now it is seeing 400,000 users in 14 cities across Sweden, France, Portugal, Spain, Norway, and Denmark. Voi told VentureBeat that it is expecting to hit profitability in most of the Nordic markets in Q1 this year.
Voi has been working closely with the cities themselves as they roll out the electric scooters. “This distinctively Scandinavian approach to growth — based on dialogue, transparency, and sustainability – ensures we only enter markets where we’re actively wanted and have a genuine role to play, while always putting citizens at the heart of everything we do,” said CEO Fredrik Hjelm. “Asking ‘permission’ before we enter new towns and cities, unlike some of our competitors, means we can work with the authorities on the ground to offer not only a viable alternative to cars but also help people to combine their e-scooter journeys with the existing public transport network to make moving around as seamless as possible. This latest investment means we can take that approach to a range of new cities while continuing to invest heavily in our product, technology, and team.”
How does Voi work? Users download the app to find the nearest electric scooter and then scan a QR code to activate the ride. The cost of each ride is €1 and then it is another €0.15 per minute — which is similar pricing as other electric scooter companies.
“Sustainable urban mobility is a global challenge and we strongly believe that Voi offers a valuable and lasting solution. The solution combines sharing, electric drive, and digitization which are the pillars of mobility of the future,” added Project A founding partner Thies Sander. “The Voi team has already shown a great track record throughout Europe and we are very much looking forward to supporting them in establishing their company in the German market.”
