GetHenry, the leading provider of e-bikes for logistics and last-mile delivery companies, has secured a €16.5 million seed round. The funding, comprising €10 million in equity and €6.5 million in debt, adds to €1 million Angel investment the startup had previously raised. The Berlin-based company provides a full-service e-bike subscription offer for companies working in the rapidly growing on-demand delivery sector. Already working in 50 cities, the funding will power further expansion into the rest of Europe.
The round was led by LocalGlobe, and Julia Hawkins, General Partner, highlighted GetHenry’s growth since it was founded, praising the “great levels of agility and dedication to pivot and adapt their offering during the pandemic.”
Fredrik Hjelm, CEO at Voi was an Angel Investor. He was attracted by a model that demonstrated “growth in the sector need not mean cities becoming more crowded and polluted.”
Visionaries Club, Founder Collective, EnBW New Ventures (ENV), GreenPoint Partners, SpeedUp Ventures and Third Sphere also participated in the round. And other Angel investors included Everphone CEO and Roger Hassan, the former COO of e-scooter hire company, TIER. Previous investors APX and InnoEnergy also participated in the most recent round.
A business transformed by the pandemic
GetHenry’s CEO Luis Orsini-Rosenberg, who co-founded the business with his cousin, Nikodemus Seilern, spoke with TFN to share the story of the company so far, and their plans for further expansion.
The business was, originally, not intended to offer e-bikes for deliveries. Both Orsini-Rosenberg and Seilern had backgrounds in transportation when they came together to launch GetHenry in 2019. Realising that most providers were focused on the business-to-consumer market, they decided to target the business-to-business market.
“For us, the b2b environment was always more interesting,” Orsini-Rosenberg explained. “We recognised this was an interesting vehicle to get around a city, so we decided to launch a product which was tailored to the hospitality industry.” Launching in 2019, their product started with around 30 Austrian hotel partners. And, after early success, they planned to expand into Southern Europe, starting with Italy and Spain. The pandemic, however, had different ideas.
“The pandemic arrived in March. 100% of our hotel partners closed down within two or three weeks, and our revenues fell to zero,” Orsini-Rosenberg recalled. With the growth in delivery, they recognised an opportunity, and pivoted to cater for the burgeoning market for last-mile and restaurant delivery. Initially starting with scooters, they quickly recognised that e-bikes offered greater versatility.
The move also helped generate further success, with demand generated by riders who saw others using their bikes. And when a chance encounter with the founder of Gorillas, the rapid grocery delivery service, led to them providing five bikes for the first Gorillas service, rapid growth followed.
“We struggled,” Orsini-Rosenberg admits, “because we needed to hire our own mechanics and ramp up the fleet very, very quickly, but we saw the opportunity and jumped on it. We scaled almost 3,000% in the first 14 months.”
The GetHenry offer
Their focus on the B2B market means that GetHenry has developed long-term relationships with clients, which covers every element of the bike, not only providing them, but also offering maintenance and servicing, and fleet management software for their clients. They currently boast 90% availability of their fleet, despite the heavy workload each bike has to manage.
And they have helped to reduce emissions. Last-mile delivery is estimated to cause an average of 225g of CO₂ emissions per delivery, but the use of e-bikes reduces that by 90%. GetHenry believes that 50% of current deliveries could be handled by e-bikes or cargo bikes, reducing congestion as well as pollution.
Having seen success in Germany and Austria, GetHenry is planning launches across Europe over the next year. With France, Spain, Netherlands, and UK launches in the pipeline, and plans for other European countries to follow. They are also expanding their team, currently 100 people, to bolster their central team in Germany as well as country-based operations teams. And GetHenry is adapting its offer for each market as well as the range they offer.
“If you look at Spain, for example, the e-bike adoption rate is not comparable to Germany or Netherlands. That’s why our target group is mainly using electric scooters,” says Orsini-Rosenberg. “We have to adapt to the conditions of the market. A big trend is transporting more volume, more than can fit into a backpack. So, cargo bikes become more important. We’ve teamed up with two manufacturers in the space to test their bikes and to see like how riders react to them, how easy it is for them to navigate through the cities, what the maintenance intervals are, how the supply chain situation looks like in this area as well.”
Despite pandemic restrictions being lifted in most places, the boom in last mile delivery has not shown any sign of subsiding, as consumers have developed new habits. In the last year, GetHenry’s bikes made 3 million deliveries, travelling the equivalent of a trip to the moon and back each week.
GetHenry’s bikes will soon become a familiar sight in many more cities, predicts Orsini-Rosenberg: “More presence on the street, and new vehicles designed by us. We are electrifying the last-mile delivery.”
