Voi, the European e-scooter rentals startup, ‘pauses’ operations in several countries

Published March 22, 2020

Following similar moves by Lime, Bird, Tier and others, Voi Technology, the European e-scooter rentals and so-called micro-mobility startup, says it has “paused” operations in several countries due to the Coronvirus pandemic. This sees the company suspend operations in all but nine key cities.

In a short statement issued to media on Friday, Voi said it had regrettably been “forced” to pause operations in the majority of cities it operates in, with only a handful of its largest cities being serviced.

The cities where Voi is continuing to operate in are: Copenhagen, Helsinki, Gothenburg, Stockholm and Oslo in the Nordics, and Berlin, Hamburg, Nuremberg and Munich in Germany.

More broadly, the Coronavirus outbreak is a major blow to e-scooter companies as cities around the world are restricting movement and social distancing and isolation is, to varying degrees, being practiced. This is seeing many companies putting in place work-from-home policies and negating the need for daily commutes, where e-scooters are often favoured. The world economy is also taking a hit and therefore recreational spending and travel is on an escalating downwards trend too.

More broadly, the business plans of e-scooter rental startups factor in seasonal demand and sources told me a few months ago that runway across the industry was based on deep enough pockets and operational smarts to get through Winter and be in a strong position to capitalise on peak Spring and Summer season demand. Coronavirus inevitably means “Winter” could now last for a very long time indeed.

The rest of the statement from Voi — which raised $85 million in Series B funding in November — follows below:

In the cities we keep open we will drastically reduce our fleet size but will continue to serve our communities and wherever possible we will keep capacity at important hubs, like major transport interchanges and hospitals.

We have been forced to make this hard decision as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. People are working from home and no longer visiting restaurants, pubs, theatres and friends and consequently have stopped using Voi e-scooters to get around.

We plan to kick start our operations again when the situation allows.

Voi raises another $85M for its European e-scooter service

Published November 11, 2019

Voi Technology, the “micro-mobility” startup that operates an e-scooter service in a 38 cities across 10 European countries, has raised an $85 million in Series B funding.

Backing the round is a mixture of existing and new investors. They include Balderton Capital, Creandum, Project A, JME Ventures, Raine Ventures, Kreos Capital, Inbox Capital, Rider Global, and Black Ice Capital. The new funding brings the total raised by Voi to $136 million.

Eagled-eyed readers will have noticed that, based on our previous Voi coverage, the total figure is $32 million short. That’s because not all of Voi’s previous Series A commitment was cashed in after the company was offered more favourable terms for its $30 million Series A extension and therefore elected not to draw down the second tranche of its original Series A.

Launched in 2018, the company is best-known for its e-scooter rentals but now pitches itself as a micro-mobility provider, offering a number of different transport devices. These include various e-scooter and e-bike models, in a bid to become a broader transport operator helping to re-shape urban transport and wean people off using cars.

To date, Voi says it has 4 million registered users and has powered 14 million rides. More recently it has launched new, more robust hardware that has been designed to sustain the rigours of commercial e-bike sharing. The idea is that more suitable hardware will help e-scooter companies improve margins since more rides can be extracted from the life-span of each vehicle.

On that note, Voi says it will use the new funding to develop “strong profitable businesses” in the 38 cities where it is already operating, as well as increase its R&D spend to improve its technology platform and products. Earlier this year, the company announced that it is already profitable in the cities of Stockholm and Oslo.

“Clearly, we feel we are on track to achieve this in more of our cities and that is our aim,” Voi co-founder and CEO Fredrik Hjelm tells me. “At this point, a key focus for us is to ensure we continue to increase the lifetime of our e-scooters, forge key partnerships and continue to work in those cities which provide the best conditions for a profitable e-scooter business”.

Hjelm says that Voi’s version 2 scooters are projected to last over 18 months, which means the company should be in profit before it needs to raise again. However, he wouldn’t be drawn on when that might be.

With regards to R&D and improvements to the Voi platform, the company will continue to work on the lifetime of its e-scooters, in addition to improved repair management via integrating “predictive diagnostics”.

Hjelm also says Voi is developing “AI-powered” fleet management and more generally the platform’s capability to support future product portfolio expansion. In other words, we can expect new micro-mobility device categories in the future.

VOI Technology, the e-scooter startup from Sweden, raises $50M led by Balderton Capital

Published November 19, 2018

VOI Technology, an e-scooter startup headquartered in Sweden but with pan-European ambitions, has raised $50 million in Series A funding, confirming our earlier scoop. As I previously reported, London-based venture capital firm Balderton Capital has led the round, alongside LocalGlobe, Raine Ventures, and previous VOI backer 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 with knowledge of VOI’s early fundraising tells me this is in actual fact two rounds effectively being announced at the same time, although both VOI and Balderton say this is not the case. The e-scooter startup had previously raised around $3 million earlier this year.

What I do know, however, is the size of this new round got increased significantly very late on as VOI continues to gain early traction and the round became more competitive with a lot of VC interest. According to my sources, the initial target was $15 million at a pre-money valuation of between $35-40 million. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to confirm the new valuation based on this much larger fundraise. Both VOI and Balderton declined to comment.

Launched in Sweden’s Stockholm in August 2018 by 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 to expand into new European markets. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, and Portugal are said to be launching “in the coming months”. The VOI jobs page reveals that VOI is recruiting country managers for Denmark, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, and Finland, too.

Like other e-scooter startups, VOI pitches itself as a way to ease traffic-clogged city centres and reduce pollution, with VOI’s scooters offering a “clean, efficient, cost-effective and zero emission” first-and-last-mile alternative to cars and taxis. After downloading the VOI app, you simply locate a nearby scooter on the street or via the app’s map, press the ‘ride’ button, scan the VOI QR code, and ride anywhere in the city. The company charges a €1 unlocking fee and a ride costs €0.15 per minute.

In just 12 weeks, VOI claims to have garnered 120,000 users, who have taken 200,000 rides, travelling 350,000 kilometres. It says this makes VOI Europe’s leading e-scooter sharing company.

“We see that we’ve changed user behaviour drastically in a very short time period,” VOI CEO Fredrik Hjelm tells me. “We changed how people commute, people move themselves. We changed how people transport within cities almost instantly after they try the scooters for the first time”.

He says this has resulted in “very strong retention rates, recurring use, and also friend referrals”.

“I’m from up in the North in Sweden, and for me it’s very difficult to understand, and 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. “That’s more from an ideological perspective. For me, scooters power freedom”.

VOI is also talking up its “distinctive” European approach in the way the company works collaboratively with city authorities. This is very different to the ‘ask for forgiveness not permission’ mentality of Silicon Valley.

“When you are reading the news, you get the feeling that city politicians are against scooters. The reality is the other way around,” Hjelm says. “The only thing is that they want a say in this and how it should be operated, so we don’t end up in a scooter graveyard situation that we see in some U.S. cities… Pretty much every European city has some kind of ambition or vision to become less dependent on fossil fuel driven cars and other vehicles”.

Balderton’s entrance into the e-scooter market comes after three of the other “big four” London VC firms have already made U.S. investments in the space. Index and Accel have backed Bird, and Atomico has backed Lime.

Last month also saw Berlin’s Tier raise €25 million in Series A funding led by Northzone, in another attempt to create the “Bird or Lime of Europe,” even if it is far from clear that Bird or Lime won’t take that title for themselves (which is obviously the bet being made by Index, Accel and Atomico). And two month’s ago Taxify also announced its intention to do e-scooter rentals under the brand Bolt, first launched in Paris but also planning to be pan-European.

This has led some VCs to describe the e-scooter space in Europe as a venture capital “blood bath” waiting to happen. The thinking is that the market has become so competitive so early, a lot of VC dollars are going to be spent (and potentially wasted) before it is far from clear who will be the eventual winner. That feels quite unusual for Europe, where it is more common for competing VCs to back off or co-invest once one or two of the big firms (or Rocket Internet) have made their move or when there is a better-funded U.S. competitor on the horizon — a point I put to Balderton Partner Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen.

“Yeah, and I think if we kept doing that as a VC community, we would never see any billion dollar companies coming out of Europe,” he replies. “This is why we’re backing VOI. [But] I get your point: it’s up against large amounts of capital”.

Describing e-scooters as a massive opportunity to change that, Fjeldsoe-Nielsen says that in the last four weeks VOI has doubled it revenues and that Balderton is seeing the same kind of traction and market reaction as Bird and Lime in the U.S.

“We believe an equally big company can come out of Europe,” he adds.

Sources: Balderton Capital gearing up to invest in Swedish e-scooter startup VOI

Published October 23, 2018

We already knew that the electronic scooter space in Europe was heating up, with Berlin’s Tier announcing today it has raised €25 million in a round led by Northzone, and rumours circulating that Delivery Hero founder Lukasz Gadowski has ventured into the space — all within the context of U.S. companies Bird and Lime recently expanding to Europe. However, now it seems that Balderton Capital could be about to make its move by investing in Sweden’s VOI Technology, another e-scooter rental play with pan-European ambitions.

According to multiple sources, the London-based venture capital firm is gearing up to lead a round in Stockholm-based VOI. Two sources say the amount being invested is $15 million at a pre-money valuation of between $35-40 million, while another source said it could be as much as $25 million. Separately, I’m hearing that with multiple term sheets on the table and the pace at which the company is growing, VOI is actually considering increasing the round to $50 million.

Other VC firms thought to be participating are Berlin’s Project A, and Netherlands-based Prime Ventures.

To date, VOI has raised just shy of $3 million in seed funding from Vostok New Ventures.

I contacted Balderton Capital earlier today, but haven’t heard back. A spokesperson for Project A also declined to comment. Neither Prime Ventures or VOI could be reached at the time of publication.

What is particularly noteworthy about Balderton’s entrance into the e-scooter market is that three of the other “big four” London VC firms have already made U.S. investments in the space. Index and Accel have backed Bird, and Atomico has backed Lime.

As I noted in my earlier Tier funding story — which marked the biggest financial backing for a European company in the space to date — this isn’t stopping a number of European investors getting busy trying to create the “Bird or Lime of Europe,” even if it is far from clear that Bird or Lime won’t take that title for themselves (which is obviously the bet being made by Index, Accel and Atomico). The general sentiment of European VCs steadfastly trying to nurture a European born competitor is that they don’t want to see the e-scooter rental market be rolled over by the U.S. in the same way that Uber rode in and knocked out many local players.

With that said, the worse-case scenario in the eyes of many of those same VCs (and those VCs standing on the sidelines not participating) is that Bird or Lime will eventually acquire the most promising European e-scooter company or companies. In other words, the downside is mitigated somewhat, failing an outright home run.

Meanwhile, Tier, VOI and Gadowski’s Go Flash aren’t the only European born e-scooter startups with pan-European ambitions. There’s also Coup, an e-scooter subsidiary owned by Bosch and backed by BCG Digital Ventures that operates in Berlin, Paris and Madrid. And just two month’s ago Taxify announced its intention to do e-scooter rentals under the brand Bolt, first launched in Paris but also planning to be pan-European, including Germany.

Not that everyone is convinced. Two early-stage European VCs I spoke to today said they hated the space. “I just don’t understand, isn’t it going to be a massive bloodbath?” said one of the VCs, before questioning the total number of rides we could see in Europe annually. “I just don’t see how Europe is going to produce multiple multibillion dollar businesses in this space. I think the market size caps it.”