Moby, which went live in Dublin with its public bike sharing scheme in 2020, has raised €4M in funding. This investment follows a €1.2M seed round in late 2020, which saw the Irish startup raise €800,000 via crowdfunding and a combination of debt/asset finance and individual investors.
This fresh round of funding will help the company’s expansion plans in Central Europe, where it has recently strengthened its management and sales teams. The company’s focus will remain on last-mile delivery, corporate markets, and the hotels and leisure industry. It has also been working on unique app-less bike rental and charging technology.
It has also created a monthly membership scheme for electric city bikes.
“I remember being on a call with a Dutch Manufacturer of e-bikes who could not believe we were in Holland operating fleets of bikes for delivery companies. He was partly embarrassed, ‘well are we going to start making whiskey to sell it back you guys?“ says Thomas O’Connell, CEO and Founder of MOBY Bikes.
Connell further said, “This funding is indicative of the investor confidence in our success to date and the large market opportunity we have as city transportation habits continue to shift towards electric bikes. Traditional micro-mobility companies have raised significant venture capital funding but have struggled to find profitability. Whereas MOBY raised very little capital and got to profitability quickly. Today we are one of the few micro-mobility companies in the world that are actually profitable, something we are very proud of and our new investors have been impressed by. It hasn’t been without a lot of hard work, believe me, scaling to five countries in two years while bootstrapped, has not been easy!”
Davin Browne, CEO of Selenean Capital and investor in MOBY said, “Selenean were thrilled to lead the latest round of investment in MOBY, a true game-changer in the B2B e-bike space. As the world continues to prioritize sustainable transportation, MOBY is well-positioned to lead the charge with their innovative technology and dedication to providing reliable, eco-friendly solutions to businesses. We are confident that MOBY’s impressive growth and success to date is just the beginning, and we look forward to working closely with their talented team as they continue to revolutionize the industry.”
Moby Bikes, founded in 2018 by Thomas O Connell, is an innovative startup focused on developing and bringing to market a variety of electric mobility solutions.
The company now has operational bases in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Holland, and the United States, and it has a fleet of over 4,000 e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, and EAVs (Electric Assisted Vehicles).
How pandemic helped Moby to start bike rentals?
With minimal on-street demand for bike rentals at the onset of the pandemic, the company claims to have identified an opportunity to give e-bikes to food delivery riders as a method to preserve revenue until the restrictions eased.
This quickly grew into a large-scale international opportunity to provide “e-bikes as a service,” and the company won large contracts in the UK, Holland, and the United States with food delivery apps, logistics companies, and large corporations, for whom it supplies, manages, and maintains large fleets of e-bikes.
