gett – Product Management Confabulation

May 10, 2022

Bookaway books $35M to scale up its ground transportation booking platform

Travel and tourism are coming back online in the wake of Covid-19 restrictions getting relaxed, and today a startup tackling one part of the equation for getting from home to one’s destination is announcing some funding to capitalize on that. Bookaway, which has built a platform for people to view options for and book their ground transportation — journeys from a long-haul arrival point to a hotel or other final destination, with some 7,000 providers listed in all currently — has raised $35 million.

The Tel Aviv-based startup’s Series C is being led by Red Dot Capital Partners. Menorah, an insurance company based in Tel Aviv, and New York based Tenere Capital, along with previous backers Aleph, Corner Ventures and Entrée Capital are all also participating. The company is not disclosing its valuation but it has raised $81 million to date.

The travel industry sometimes feels like it is in a perpetual state of consolidation: partly because of price pressures due to the slowdown of the last few years; increasing fuel prices; and general competition, companies like Airbnb or Booking, airlines, and hotel groups build more services into their offerings in an attempt to improve their margins and bring more economies of scale into their operations.

But Noam Toister, the CEO and founder of Bookaway, believes that a huge opportunity remains in ground transportation largely because of how offline and fragmented it is, including when it comes to traveling to remote or exotic locations.

“Our group was born during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a shared belief that the ground transport industry will better meet the needs of travelers when it is united, not fragmented,” he said. The company has already made four acquisitions underscoring how some of that de-fragmentation will come in consolidation within the specific area of ground transportation itself. Founded originally to provide services in Asia as Bookaway.com, when bookings collapsed, it started to raise money to buy up other similarly-challenged businesses to shore up for a time when the tide would turn: 12Go and GetByBus acquisitions followed to expand in Asia Pacific and the Balkans, and then Plataforma 10 in Argentina followed.

In all, the company has knitted together thousands of providers — most of them independent and very local businesses — on a platform that travelers can use to book their journeys ahead of time, with providers including busses, ferries, trains, private transportation options and more. Digitizing that experience in itself is a big undertaking and shift: some 95% of ground transportation providers are “offline” according to Toister, and there are some 10,000 globally in what is collectively a $157 billion annual market. “If you are traveling in the world you book flights and hotels, but most destinations still don’t have a airport,” he said, meaning transportation from the airport to the hotel is a trek, “and it’s hard to book transport currently.”

He notes that Uber and companies like it are not currently seen as competitors although Uber has recently started to wade into this market, representing a potential threat, or perhaps a partner. “It’s heavy lifting to connect with 7,000 transport companies globally,” Toister said.

“This is an experienced management team that have grown successful travel-tech companies before,” said Barak Saloman, managing partner, Red Dot Capital Partners, in a statement. “With a complex task like globalizing ground transport you need local knowledge, technology expertise and industry experience. Bookaway Group has all three and they’re committed to winning this market.”

March 16, 2022

Sokowatch rebrands to Wasoko as it raises $125M Series B from Tiger Global and Avenir

Informal retail is king in Africa, with hundreds of billions of dollars of consumer goods are sold through its channels yearly. Yet its industry remains highly fragmented as shop owners and kiosks still have issues around access to capital and getting goods regularly and on time from suppliers and distributors.

B2B retail and e-commerce platforms have primarily tried to fix these inefficient supply chains over the last couple of years and have received substantial investor backing since the pandemic.

It has been a hot sector for investors, and today’s news shows they aren’t slowing down in backing these startups just yet as Sokowatch, one of the major players in the space, announced that it has raised $125 million in Series B funding. The investment — which values the company at $625 million, as TechCrunch has learned — coincides with its rebrand to Wasoko.

In 2015, founder and CEO Daniel Yu launched Sokowatch in Kenya as an asset-light platform and a marketplace for distributing fast-moving consumer goods from suppliers to retailers. He told TechCrunch that this model wasn’t efficient because Sokowatch couldn’t guarantee that the goods were delivered to the customer when they made orders.

“We realized that to deliver the quality of service these shops deserved, we needed to get more involved,” said the CEO. “In managing the operations directly ourselves … we went from an asset-light backend distribution software platform to this market-facing platform that was out there delivering goods directly to shops themselves.”

At this point, Sokowatch was full-scale, asset-heavy, owning and leasing facilities in its distribution chain from warehousing to logistics. And what started in Kenya soon scaled into neighboring East African markets Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda in 2018. While the company was due for a rebrand, Yu said it was still figuring out operations in this new integrated model.

However, its recent entry into Ivory Coast and Senegal somewhat forced the company’s hand. Yu believes Sokowatch is now ready for a rebrand as it enters its next phase of growth — moving from an East African player to a pan-African one.

“Sokowatch started as this kind of backend brand. We wanted a brand that could be more front and center for the African retailer and easily pronounced across all markets while reflecting our East African roots. So that’s why we’ve rebranded now to Wasoko, meaning ‘people of the market,'” he said.

Wasoko allows retailers from Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Ivory Coast and Senegal to order products from suppliers via SMS or its mobile app for same-day delivery to their stores and shops via a network of logistics drivers. The company also offers a buy now, pay later option for retailers who need working capital to order more goods.

Buy now, pay later offerings are the latest trend for B2B retail and e-commerce companies. They see it as a sticky option in an otherwise volatile space where retailers aren’t committed to one player, given non-differential offerings. To provide working capital to these retailers, the likes of TradeDepot and MarketForce raised impressive rounds with a significant debt component. But Wasoko chose not to go down that route; instead, it is financing its BNPL option from its balance sheet.

“We do buy now, pay later to our merchants and it’s a significant part of our business. But we’ve been able to do that on our own without raising any kind of separate debt facilities. But we’re looking at debt financing options,” Yu said.

In terms of competition, MarketForce, an asset-light platform, is also present in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. TradeDepot, on the other hand, operates an asset-heavy model across Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. What they have in common is a presence in Nigeria, arguably the largest market for informal retail in Africa.

“Our choice to expand to the Francophone West African markets, I think, reflects the strong growth that those countries have exhibited in the region overall. If you look at the past 10 years, both Senegal and Cote d’Ivoire have experienced solid year-on-year GDP growth,” said Yu when asked why Sokowatch hasn’t expanded into West African countries other than Nigeria.

“Whereas you look at a market like Nigeria, the reality is that growth has been volatile and in some years, in fact, negative. And on top of that, you have a lot of challenges in Nigeria’s macro-environment when it comes to the economy, currency and regulations.”

TradeDepot raises $110M from IFC, Novastar to extend BNPL service to merchants across Africa

Informal retail across any African market is an untapped opportunity that gives any first-mover a ridiculous advantage. And though no B2B e-commerce player has a monopoly on the Nigerian market, it seems more saturated than other markets because of the number of players in it — from Sabi to Omnibiz and Alerzo. Less competitive markets like Ivory Coast and Senegal present an enormous opportunity for Wasoko.

“Any market that we look at is going to have a huge amount of demand for our services. And of course, the supply chains in these other markets are even less organized, less established, and therefore more fragmented with more inefficiencies,” Yu said. “We see the opportunity to take our model to be truly effective across Africa and expect that we’ll be able to leverage on our existing experience in our playbook for successfully launching and scaling our services now in six countries across the continent.”

Since launching in 2016, Wasoko has delivered 2.5 million orders to more than 50,000 active retail customers in its network. The company said its revenue has grown over 500% in the past year and 1,000% since 2019. TechCrunch learned that the African B2B e-commerce platform is processing $300 million in ARR/GMV across more than 150,000 monthly orders.

Wasoko’s 800 employees are shareholders of the company through its universal employee equity policy. The round of funding is good news for both employees and early backers who took a bet on Wasoko years ago as new investors Tiger Global and Avenir Growth Capital lead the new Series B round (the pair also co-led Flutterwave’s Series C investment last March).

“It was strategic. We’ve shared investors with Flutterwave since the early days; 4DX Ventures, for example, was an early investor in both Flutterwave and us,” Yu said when asked about the similarities between his and Flutterwave’s round.

“When it came to raising this round, I think being able to follow in their footsteps by working with these great global investors who had seen the great return that Flutterwave had brought them, I think helped smooth path for us as we reached the stage in our growth as well.”

For Tiger Global, this is the 10th deal and first outside fintech since entering Africa’s tech market in 2021. Wasoko is also its second e-commerce investment on the continent after leading Takealot’s $100 million in 2014 (Wasoko is B2B e-commerce, while Takealot is B2C).

It’s the third African investment for Avenir Growth Capital following its checks in Flutterwave and Carry1st.

Wasoko’s round, which is coming two years after it closed a $14 million Series A, also welcomed participation from VNV Global; Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart; and Sujeet Kumar, co-founder of Udaan; Quona Capital; 4DX Ventures; and JAM Fund.

Kumar, bringing in years of experience from running Udaan, the largest B2B retail e-commerce company globally, joins Wasoko’s board of directors.

The new investment, the second-largest non-fintech round in Africa after Andela and largest in the B2B retail e-commerce space, will allow Wasoko further drive geographic expansion and product growth across the continent.

Despite staying away from Nigeria for so long, the seven-year-old company said it is exploring expansion into the West African nation as well as Southern Africa while consolidating its position across its six current markets. It will also make hires and expand its product offerings to point-of-sale merchant systems, bill payments and social commerce, verticals it might build in-house or back and acquire companies that provide such services.

Sokowatch raises $14M to digitize Africa’s informal B2B supply-chain

December 14, 2021

Mesh Payments racks up $50M to help corporate users manage spend and payments

Now that the world appears to have settled longer-term into working in a significantly more distributed way in the wake of Covid-19, companies are getting more serious about using tools to manage how their teams operate within those new parameters. Today, a startup that’s addressing that challenge and how it relates specifically to expenses is announcing some funding.

Mesh Payments, which provides a platform for companies to oversee and manage employees’ expenses, and for employees themselves to better track and manage how and where they spend money, has raised $50 million. It plans to use the funding to continue expanding the functionality of its platform, as well as for further business development. It’s been on a growth boom in the last nine months, growing tenfold in that period, it said.

The round, a Series B, is being led by the very prolific Tiger Global, with participation also from Entrée Capital and Falcon Edge Capital, as well as past backers TLV Partners and Meron Capital. Mesh Payments — founded in Israel and now headquartered in New York — had previously raised $13 million, and it is not disclosing valuation.

Currently the company’s tools cover areas like travel expenses, spend cards and other forms of spend management, but potentially the more interesting aspect of how Mesh works lies in its name.

Mesh Payments’ platform integrates with various other pieces of software and apps that a company might use to run its business, and continually scans that network to determine whether a particular purchase is a useful one, or one that might be overlapping with something that already exists, not to mention not in line with other parts of a company’s specific expenditure policy.

“We start with the notion that there is different context to different kinds of spend,” Oded Zehavi, co-founder and CEO of Mesh Payments, said in an interview. “The process for a trip versus software differs, so we started building models for these unique cases.”

Today, the platform integrates with the likes of QuickBooks, Slack, Netsuite, Xero, G Suite from Google, and more. “We are adding more connectors to connect data from organizations’ services on the cloud to be exposed to more company behavior,” he said. “The combination of that data and the intelligence that we designed in a more superior way is what sets us apart.”

So, for example, if an employee suddenly decides to set up an iCloud storage subscription, Mesh would scan the network to determine if that fits with corporate policy, and would also set out to see if the organization already has an account with another cloud storage company. If either of those questions raises a flag, the purchase is flagged, too.

Employees get notifications of these, and so to spend managers on the finance team. It’s up to the finance team to decide how strict they would like the policy to be: whether purchases are blocked, or rejected in the aftermath, or issued with a warning/alert.

Understandably, the system requires some substantial onramping from customers: they have to already be working in a digital enough way in order for Mesh’s modelling to work to its best ability. So unsurprisingly, the current customer list is heavy with technology companies, which are already working in the cloud and thus representing an easy port to working with Mesh: Monday.com, Hippo Insurance, Sezzle, Riskified and Snyk are on the list.

As recent rounds for Pleo (which raised at a $4.7 billion valuation just last week) and Soldo (which raised $180 million in July) show, there is currently a huge appetite in the market for better and more updated tools for managing expenses, both at a time when employees may be needing to spend more independently than before because of how they’re working, but also because companies are simply looking to get smarter and to better grips with the systems and financial management they have in place.

Mesh’s focus on larger businesses gives it a very wide funnel, targeting an area that has been particularly rife with legacy tools from companies like SAP (although to be fair they are all focusing on improving user experience and tapping into modern technology more).

Nevertheless, it’s a massive opportunity that is likely to stay, just like at least some of our newly-distributed working practices.

“Mesh Payments is an example of a true disruptor — a company who’s innovations are transforming an already-established industry,” said John Curtius, a partner at Tiger Global who led this investment, in a statement. “We’re proud to support a business that continues to deliver on its ambitions, and we look forward to helping Mesh modernize the payments space even further.

April 18, 2021

Gett inks deal with Curb Mobility to bring yellow cabs to its enterprise-focused on-demand ride-hailing app

Gett, the ride-hailing startup that has been carving out a niche for itself in a crowded and competitive market for on-demand transportation by focusing on enterprise accounts and connecting people with rides in some 1,500 cities leveraging a number of third-party fleets, is adding another partner today as it continues to double down on its business model in the wake of corporate travel slowly coming back online.

Gett has inked a deal to integrate Curb Mobility to integrate yellow taxis into Gett’s app, which will now cover some 65 cities across the US. The news is coming at a time when Gett is looking to expand its service to meet more demand: it notes that rides currently at around 80% of the levels they were in Q1 2020, just ahead of Covid-19 really descending on the western world.

From what we understand, the deal does not involve any investment between Gett — which has raised around $865 million to date (including most recently closing a $115 million round) and was last valued at $1.5 billion in 2019 — and Curb — which is a part of Verifone, after the payments hardware company acquired it in 2015.

(If you think it sounds odd for a payments hardware company to own a taxi fleet app, this is only part of Curb’s business and is in fact also a hardware player: in addition to Curb providing a way to hail yellow taxis — it app covers some 50,000 cabs and 100,000 drivers — the company also builds hardware for cabs and fleet operations, including metering apps, payment terminals, and those interactive screens for passengers that let them pay for rides, watch news and advertisements and more.)

To differentiate its service from the very highly capitalized Ubers and Lyfts of the world, Gett has been building out a two-pronged strategy that covers both how it scales, and the services that it provides to its users.

On the scaling front, Gett has been moving away from managing fleets of contractor drivers in the US for some years now: back in 2019, after slogging it out for years against Lyft and Uber in its primary New York metro market, Gett effectively shut down its main fleet operation in the region and instead inked a deal with Lyft. That has become a template of sorts that the company has been repeating in other cities outside of the U.S. where it doesn’t have substantial market share. (For example, Ola is another Gett partner.) In some cities where it has a larger footprint, like London and Moscow, Gett works with drivers directly.

Partner fleets made up one-third of Gett’s business in the first quarter of this year, but as Gett brings on more to its network, it expects partner fleets to cover the majority of its rides by the end of this year, the company said.

On the service front, Gett has made a big bet on building a platform that integrates with businesses at the back end to make it easier to order rides and for them to reconcile more easily with a businesses expense management and accounting software. Gett’s big pitch to would-be customers is that this software makes it less expensive and significantly more efficient to hail a cab using Gett compared to the alternatives — for starters users can compare different prices from different providers — and it gives users significantly more choice.

“Today’s partnership cements Gett’s position as a technology platform focused on corporate Ground Transportation Management (GTM), where spend is worth $79.6 billion globally,” said Dave Waiser, CEO and co-founder of Gett, in a statement. “In recent years, we have become the GTM category leader, serving over a quarter of Fortune 500 companies.”

On the part of Curb, it gives drivers using its software another link through to an app that might bring in more business at a time when riders have more choice than ever before, covering not just other on-demand car apps, but eco-friendly, exercise-ready, and traffic-busting options like e-bikes, scooters and shared rides. As the profile of the average corporate user changes and gets younger, that too will change the expectations many of them will have for what constitutes a preferred set of ground transportation options, depending on the situation.

“As cities across the U.S. prepare for the return of international travel, our partnership with Gett will create new income opportunities for local drivers and ensure Gett’s business users have access to the same safe, reliable transportation options trusted by locals,” said Amos Tamam, CEO at Curb. “By integrating with platforms like Gett, we’re aiming to make taxis more ubiquitous online by opening up new digital avenues for today’s consumers and businesses to find and book taxis.”

January 12, 2021

Gett raises $115M more for its on-demand ride-hailing platform for business users

As ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft continue to find their feet in a new landscape for transportation services — where unessential travel is being actively discouraged in many markets, and people remain concerned about catching the coronavirus in restricted, shared spaces — a smaller player that has carved out a place for itself targeting business users is announcing more funding.

Gett, which started out as a more direct competitor to the likes of Uber and Lyft but now focuses mainly on ground transportation services for business clients in major cities around the world, said in a short statement that it has closed a round of $115 million. The company — co-headquartered in London and Israel — also said it is now “operationally profitable” and is hitting its budget targets.

The funding is being led by new backer Pelham Capital Investments Ltd. and also included participation from unnamed existing investors.

Including this round, Gett has now raised $965 million, with past investors including VW, Access and its founder Len Blavatnik, Kreos, MCI and more. Gett’s last confirmed valuation was $1.5 billion, pegged to a $200 million fundraise in May 2019. It’s not talking about current valuation, or any recent customer numbers, today.

Dave Waiser, Gett’s founder and CEO, described the funding earlier today in a note to me as an extension to the company’s previous round, a $100 million equity investment that it announced in July last year.

Chairman Amos Genish, said in a statement that the funding round was oversubscribed, “which shows the market’s interest in our platform and long term vision. Gett is disrupting and transforming a fragmented market delivering ever-critical cost optimisation and client satisfaction.”

The company has been building out a focus on the B2B market for several years now — a smart way of avoiding the expensive and painful race to compete like-for-like against the Ubers of the world — and this most recent round (which now totals $215 million) is focused on doubling down on that.

The Gett of the past — it was originally founded in 2010 under the name GetTaxi — did indeed try to build a business around both consumers and higher-end users, but the idea behind Gett today is to focus on corporate accounts.

Gett provides those businesses’ employees with a predictable and reliable app-based platform to make it easier to order car services wherever they happen to be traveling, and those businesses — which in the past would have used a fragmented mix of local services — then have a consolidated way of managing, accounting for and analysing those travel expenses. It claims to be able to save companies some 25-40% in costs.

The company previously said that its network covered some 1,500 cities. In certain metropolitan areas like London and Moscow, Gett provides transportation services directly. In markets where it does not have direct operations (such as anywhere in the U.S., including New York), it partners with third parties, such as Lyft.

“We are on a journey to transform corporate ground travel and I’m delighted that investors find our model attractive,” Waiser said in a statement today. “This investment will allow us to further develop our SaaS technology and deepen our proposition within the corporate ground travel market.”

September 8, 2020

Committing to a fully zero-emission fleet by 2040, Uber is dedicating $800 million to electrifying its drivers

Ride hailing giant Uber is committing to become a fully zero-emission platform by 2040 and setting aside $800 million to help get its drivers using electric vehicles by 2025.

The company said that it would invest further in its micro-mobility options as well with the goal of having 100 percent of its rides take place on electric vehicles in the US, Canada, and European cities in which the company operates. Uber also said it would commit to reaching net-zero emissions from its own corporate operations by 2030.

If the company can hit its timeline, Uber would achieve necessary milestones in its operations a decade ahead of the Paris Climate Agreement targets set for 2050.

The keys to the company’s efforts are four new and expanding initiatives, according to a statement.

The first is the launch of Uber Green in 15 US and Canadian cities. For customers willing to spend an extra dollar, they can request an EV or hybrid electric vehicle to pick them up. By the end of the year, Uber Green will be available in over 65 cities around the world. Riders who choose the green option will also receive three times the Uber Rewards points they would have received for a typical UberX ride, the company said.

Uber’s second step toward making the world a greener place is to commit $800 million to transition its fleet to electric vehicles. Part of that transition is being subsidized by the $1 surcharge for riders who choose to go green and from fees that the company collects under its London and French Clean Air Plans. Those are 15 cent (or pence) surcharges that Uber has been collecting since January of last year to pay for the electrification of its drivers’ cars in European cities.

Dara Kowsrowshahi, chief executive officer of Uber Technologies Inc., speaks during an event in New Delhi, India, on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018. During his Japan trip, Khosrowshahi has made it clear the ride-hailing company isnt scaling back its ambitions in certain Asian markets, despite speculation of a retreat. Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

To incentivize drivers to go green, Uber’s doling out an extra 50 cents per trip in the US and Canada for every “Uber Green” trip completed to be paid out by riders. Drivers using EVs will also get another dollar from Uber itself, amounting to $1.50 more per trip for each EV ride completed.

Other enticements include partnerships with GM in the US and Canada and Renault -Nissan in Europe to offer discounts on electric vehicles to Uber drivers. Working with Avis, Uber is planning to offer more electric vehicles for rental to US drivers. Meanwhile, the company said it would also expand electric vehicle charging by working to develop new charging stations in conjunction with companies like BP, EVgo, Enel X, Izivia by EDF, and Power Dot.

Uber’s also working to revive the vision of robotic battery swapping to enable customers to forget about their concerns when it comes to charging a new vehicle. It’s working with the San Francisco-based startup, Ample, as the young company develops its battery-swapping tech — and Lithium Urban Technologies, an electric fleet operator out of India.

Building on its existing micro-mobility network, the company is going to integrate bikes and scooters from Lime even closer into its networks and expanding its shared ride programs as soon as its safe to do it. The company is also intent on expanding its Journey Planning feature to enable users to see pricing options, schedules, and directions to and from transit stations. Uber also now offers in-app ticketing in more than ten cities, so people can buy public transit passes in the app itself. As a coup de grace, Uber’s also unveiling a new feature that allows users to plan their trips in Chicago and Sydney using cars and public transit to get where they need to go.

Finally, the company has released its first Climate Assessment and Performance Report analyzing emissions from the company’s operations in the United States and Canada from 2017 through 2019. Unsurprisingly, Uber found that it was more efficient than single-occupant driving, but the company did reveal that its carbon intensity is higher than that of average-occupancy personal cars. Meaning when there’re two people using a personal car, their footprint is lower than that of an Uber driver looking for passengers.

Although arguably, Uber shouldn’t be having its customers foot so much of the bill for its electric transition, these are all positive steps from a company that still has a long road ahead of it if it’s looking to reduce its carbon footprint.

July 27, 2020

The Station: Winners and losers in Paris, Rivian sets a delivery date, Waymo and FCA deepen ties

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox.

Hello and welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B.

It’s that whacky time of year when the heavens open and earnings fall from the sky, giving us precious insight into publicly traded companies. Over at TechCrunch we closely follow startups; we also keep an eye on publicly traded companies — a list that is growing in this summer of the SPAC. My earnings highlight this week is Tesla, an often polarizing company that has had an unprecedented stock run up since March.

I’ve been writing about Tesla for nearly a decade. Its earnings reports, and the reactions to them, are fascinating. The company’s second-quarter earnings report was no different. At first glance, Tesla appears to have won on all fronts, managing to extend its profitability streak to four quarters — its longest period of profitability to date — despite headwinds from the COVID-19 pandemic.

We’re here to provide a complete picture of each company we write about. Here are other details that matter beyond the bottom line.

Tesla revenue was nearly flat compared to last quarter and down 5% from the same period last year. Tesla was able hit its profit mark after slashing operating expenses and taking in $428 million of regulatory credit revenue — (regulatory credits accounted for roughly 400% of 2Q GAAP profit, per Morgan Stanley). Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn said during the earnings call that Tesla expects to double its revenue from regulatory credits in 2020 over last year. He also said he expects regulatory credit sales to decline eventually.

One upside surprise: Tesla generated a positive $418 million of free cash flow in the quarter, which was much better than anticipated.

Finally, watch for capital expenditures and operating costs in the second half of the year. Tesla is going through an unprecedented expansion and says it will have three factories under construction — Berlin, China and Texas — this year. The Texas factory, which will produce the Cybertruck, Tesla Semi and the Model Y and Model 3 for the East Coast, was also announced on the call.

Alrighty, let’s dig in. Vamos!

Reach out and email me anytime at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, offer up opinions or tips. You can also send a direct message to me at Twitter — @kirstenkorosec.

Micromobbin’

Micromobility companies Dott, Lime and Tier Mobility scored a huge win this week and secured permits to operate in Paris, one of a handful of cities in the world that have become key battlegrounds over market share in the shared scooter and bike industry.

About 16 companies were vying for a spot. Bird is perhaps the most visible loser in this gambit. Just a year ago, the U.S. scooter pioneer made a big bet on the French market and announced plans to open its biggest European office in Paris. Bird said at the time that it wanted to hire 1,000 people by mid-2021.

Other companies that applied for the permit included Bolt, Comodule, Spin, Voi and Wind.

Paris is viewed as one of a handful of prime marketplaces to deploy scooters. How important is Paris? William Henderson, CEO of Ride Report, put it to me this way in a recent interview.

“A handful of small handful of companies will go out of business as a result of not getting that one permit — that’s how big a deal it is, just that one market.”

In other micromobbin’ news this week ….

Bicycles have become a tool used by protestors and police.

Cowboy has raised a $26 million (€23 million) in a Series B funding round from Exor Seeds, HCVC, Isomer Capital, Future Positive Capital and Index Ventures. The startup has been manufacturing premium electric bikes and selling them directly to consumers around Europe.

Google Maps has rolled out some new features for bicyclists as demand for safe routes has skyrocketed. Since February, requests for cycling directions in Google Maps have jumped by 69%, according to Google. The app now has end-to-end directions that include docked bike share information. For some cities, Maps will show users links to open the relevant bike share app to book and unlock the bike. The blog post is worth a read, if only to understand how Google Maps determines the best route.

SoundCloud founders Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung, together with the co-founder of Jimdo, Christian Springub have launched a new subscription e-bike service called Dance. The invite-only program kicks-off first in Berlin, with an all-inclusive service package of a €59-a-month “introductory price” and its own design of e-bike. The founders’ goal is to emphasize the community aspects of the rental service, just as they did with SoundCloud.

Deal of the week

A PSA about deals. This is going to sound like an obvious message, but alas, conversations with folks at several transportation startups in the past two months have prompted me to spell it out here. The details, or terms, of deals and partnerships matter. I try to provide the most complete reporting possible when I cover partnership announcements, despite efforts by companies to keep terms secret or to paint a rosier-than-reality picture of the deal. “Try” is the important word. I’m not always successful.

Take the TuSimple – Navistar deal announced last week. The two companies said they would develop and begin producing autonomous semi trucks by 2024. It also involved Navistar taking an undisclosed stake in the startup.

This appeared to be a critical win for TuSimple, the autonomous trucking startup with operations in China and the U.S. The timing of the announcement was also important; I learned and reported last month that TuSimple was starting to shop around for at least $250 million in new funding.

However, what wasn’t clear until The Information’s reporters talked to folks familiar with the deal, is that TuSimple is expected to pay Navistar “tens of millions of dollars per year for at least several years to develop and gain access to Navistar trucks.” TuSimple also “gave” Navistar an equity stake.

The partnership may very well end up being fruitful for both companies. That doesn’t change the facts that this deal has an unusual structure and illustrates the challenges that TuSimple as well as other self-driving trucking startups face as they try to form partnerships with legacy manufacturers.

Other deals that got our attention this week …

Claims Genius, a company that provides instant vehicle damage assessment using computer vision and artificial intelligence technology, raised $5.5 million in a Series A funding round that included investments from Malaysia-based Financial Link and SIRI Info Solutions.

Dexerity emerged from stealth with $56.2 million in funding raised to date, from a long list of backers, including Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Obvious Ventures, Pacific West Bank, B37 Ventures, Presidio (Sumitomo) Ventures, Blackhorn Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures and Stanford StartX. Dexerity has built a full-stack solution aimed at creating collaborative robotics systems. (Yes, this isn’t exactly mobility, but there is a crossover to robotics) The hardware-software system is designed for a variety of different tasks, including bin picking and box packing, targeted at warehouse fulfillment and logistics needs.

Gett, the ride-hailing company based in Israel and London, raised $100 million to fund its B2B business, which CEO and founder Dave Waiser says is growing — not shrinking or staying flat — in the midst of the global health pandemic. The company has raised, to date, $750 million, with investors including VW, Access and its founder Len Blavatnik, Kreos, MCI and more, and its last valuation was $1.5 billion, pegged to a $200 million fundraise in May 2019.

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. reached an agreement that will cut the debt it owes lenders who financed its rental car fleet to less than $5 billion from $11 billion by Dec. 31. As part of the deal, Hertz has agreed to sell 182,000 cars over the next few months. Hertz also has to make $650 million in lease payments.

Sea Machines Robotics, an autonomous ship navigation startup, raised $15 million in Series B funding round led by Accomplice. Brunswick, Eniac VC, Geekdom Fund, LaunchCapital, NextGen Venture Partners, and Toyota AI Ventures also joined the round.

SmartHop, a Florida-based startup that developed software to small trucking companies manage their business, raised $4.5 million in a seed round led by Equal Ventures. Additional investors in the round include Greycroft, Las Olas VC.

Swoop, a Los Angeles-based SaaS startup that has built a booking and management platform for local transportation companies has raised $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by Signia Venture Partners, South Park Commons and several angel investors, including former Uber CPO Manik Gupta; Kevin Weil, co-creator of Libra at Facebook; Kim Fennel, a former Uber executive; and Elizabeth Weil, former partner at Andreessen Horowitz and 137 Ventures.

Sibros, a connected vehicle platform company, raised $12 million in Series A funding, bringing its total capital raised to more than $15 million. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners with participation from Moneta Ventures and Twin Ventures. Sibros has developed a platform that connects and manages all vehicle software inventory and configurations as well as collects data from every sensor and component. The upshot? The platform is designed so automakers can provide in-vehicle firmware updates as well as advanced analytics.

XPeng, the electric vehicle startup run by former Alibaba executive He Xiaopeng, raised around $500 million in a Series C+ round to further develop models tailored to China’s tech-savvy middle-class consumers. Investors in Xpeng’s latest round include Hong Kong-based private equity firm Aspex Management, American tech hedge fund Coatue Management, China’s top private equity fund Hillhouse Capital and Sequoia Capital China. Existing big-name backers include Foxconn, Xiaomi, GGV Capital, Morningside Venture Capital, IDG Capital and Primavera Capital.

Notable reads and other tidbits

Here’s an additional roundup of transportation news that got my attention.

Autonomous vehicles

Amazon is taking its autonomous delivery robot Scout on the road. Scout will expand operations to two cities in the American Southeast: Atlanta, Georgia and Franklin, Tennessee.

Aurora, the autonomous vehicle technology startup backed by Amazon, is expanding into Texas as it aims to accelerate the development of self-driving trucks. The company plans to test commercial routes in the Dallas-Fort Worth Area with a mix of Fiat Chrysler Pacifica minivans and Class 8 trucks. A small fleet of Pacificas will arrive first. The trucks will be on the road in Texas by the end of the year, Aurora said.

Kiwibot, the delivery robot startup that got its start shuttling burritos and snacks to students on the University of California-Berkeley campus, is expanding to San Jose with a new business model and partners Shopify and Ordermark.

Waymo and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles struck a deal to develop and test autonomous cargo vans and other light commercial vehicles designed to shuttle goods. The agreement is an expansion of a partnership that kicked off four years ago with a focus on self-driving Pacifica hybrid minivans meant to transport people.

A few items are worth noting here (bear with me). The initial plan is to integrate Waymo’s self-driving stack — the suite of software and hardware that allows the vehicle to operate without a human behind the wheel — into FCA’s Ram ProMaster vans. These self-driving cargo vans will be used by Waymo Via, the company’s trucking and local delivery service.

It appears that the terms of the deal could extend far beyond Waymo Via. It’s possible that FCA could supply other transport companies with the self-driving vans (equipped with Waymo tech) through a licensing deal. It’s also important to note that the partnership covers FCA’s entire portfolio of vehicles. And folks familiar with the deal tell me it also extends to future affiliates. This point matters because FCA and French automaker Groupe PSA are in the process of merging into a newly formed corporation called Stellantis. If the 50-50 merger closes as expected in the first quarter of next year, the agreement would theoretically include all the brands that fall under Stellantis.

Finally, you might recall that FCA announced a partnership with Aurora last year. It turns out that this was a memorandum of understanding to work together, an agreement that has since run its course and ended, a spokesperson said. The two companies are still working on custom-built Pacifica hybrids, which Aurora is using in its testing. They are not developing autonomous commercial vans.

2020 Ram ProMaster

It’s electric

Audi CEO Markus Duesmann conceded that Tesla has a significant technological lead in several areas, including in battery tech. Audi is making efforts to catch up. For instance, the company is researching bi-directional charging that would integrate electric vehicles into the domestic power grid.

Faraday Future’s founder had his personal bankruptcy plan approved. The Verge rooted out the most interesting details that surfaced in court.

Ford took a page out of Tesla’s playbook and unveiled a special edition of its forthcoming four-door electric Mustang. This one-off has seven electric motors producing a total of 1,400 HP, which to put into layman’s terms, is a shit-ton of power.

General Motors is on track to deliver 20 electric vehicles by 2023, the company said in its latest sustainability report. That includes models for nearly all of its brands, including Cadillac, GMC, Chevrolet and Buick. Most of these vehicles will use GM’s new modular EV architecture, called Ultium. Matt Burns provides an overview on 12 upcoming models.

Rivian has started to run a pilot production line at its factory in Normal, Illinois and says it will start deliveries of its all-electric pickup truck and SUV next summer. Rivian said deliveries of its R1T electric pickup truck will begin in June 2021. Deliveries of the R1S electric SUV will start in August 2021.

Tesla filed a lawsuit against electric vehicle automaker Rivian and four former employers, on allegations of poaching talent and stealing trade secrets.

Miscellaneous

Jaguar Land Rover is working with the University of Cambridge to develop a touchless touchscreen for future cars, per Car and Driver.

Turo kicked off a campaign that I can say I would not have predicted last summer. The peer-to-peer car rental startup designed Turo Car Masks — yes, a giant mask for a vehicle — and is working with manufacturers to make them for top hosts as a way to promote travel safety. This image is a preliminary design. Turo tells me that anything it produces will be safe for the road.

Image Credits: Turo

The U.S. Department of Transportation and the NETT Council issued a document that provides a guidance for emerging transportation technology, including hyperloop. Importantly, it establishes hyperloop’s eligibility for federal funding for projects.

“We have determined that these hyperloop projects are just as eligible for grant as any maglev or magnetic levitation project,” said Finch Fulton, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy during the live-streamed event. “This includes the Federal Railroad Administration Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Program, the Office of the Secretary BUILD and INFRA grants, and programs of that sort. This also means that they would be eligible for some of the Department’s loan and lending programs.”

Volkswagen wants to turn its cloud-based software and data portal called the Industrial Cloud Network into a broader marketplace for other manufacturing and technology companies. The Industrial Cloud Network, designed by VW and Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well as integration partner Siemens, would operate like an app store. Manufacturing technology and partner companies will be able collaborate on new software applications and eventually connect VW factories around the world to its global suppliers.

July 8, 2019

Meituan, Alibaba, and the new landscape of ride-hailing in China

Instead of switching between apps to secure a ride during rush hour, people in China can now hail from different companies using a single app. Some of the country’s largest internet companies — including ride-hailing giant Didi itself — are placing bets on this type of aggregation service.

The nascent model is reminiscent of a feature Google Maps added in early 2017 allowing users to hail Uber, Lyft, Gett and Hailo straight from its navigation app. A few months later, AutoNavi, a maps app owned by Alibaba, debuted a similar feature in China. Other big names like Baidu, Hellobike, Meituan and Didi subsequently joined forces with third-party ride-booking services rather than building their own.

The trend underscores changes in China’s massive ride-hailing industry of 330 million users (in Chinese). The government is tightening rules around vehicle and driver accreditation, leading to a widescale driver shortage. Meanwhile, established carmakers including BMW and state-owned Shouqi are entering the fray, offering premium rides with better-trained fleet drivers, but they face an uphill battle with Didi, which gobbled up Uber China in 2016.

By corraling various ride-booking services, an aggregator can shorten wait time for users. For new ride-hailing players, riding on a billion-user platform like Meituan opens up wider user acquisition channels.

These ride-hailing marketplaces let users request rides from any number of third-party services available. At the end of the trip, users pay directly through the aggregator, which normally takes a commission of about 10%, although none of the players have disclosed how revenue is exactly divided with their mobility partners.

In comparison, a ride-hailing operator such as Didi charges about 20% from each trip since they take care of driver management, customer support and other dirty work which, to a great extent, helps build the moat around their business.

Here’s a look at who the aggregators are.

January 24, 2019

Whim, the all-in-one mobility app for ride sharing, public transit, and rentals is coming to the US

MaaS Global, the company behind the all-in-one mobility app Whim, which offers a subscription service for public transportation, ride-sharing, bike rentals, scooter rentals, taxis, or car rentals will be making its U.S. debut later this year.

The company will choose its American launch city from Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Miami, according to Sampo Hietanan, the company’s chief executive.

The Whim app is currently available in Antwerp, Birmingham, UK, Helsinki, and Vienna, according to Hietanan, and offers a range of subscription options. The top of the line version is a EUR500 per month all-inclusive package giving users unlimited access to ride hailing, bike and car rentals, and access to public transportation.

“Cars take 70 percent of the market and it’s used 4 percent of the time so you’re paying for the optional capacity,” says Hietanan. Using Whim, which, at the high end costs about as much as a car in Europe, users can get all of the optionality without paying for the unused capacity. It should ideally reduce transportation costs and cut down on emissions, if Hietanan’s claims are accurate.

The Helsinki-based company uses APIs to connect with the back end of a number of service providers. For car rentals, it’s working with businesses like Hertz, Enterprise, and EuropeCar; for ride share, the company has linked with Gett and local European taxi companies, according to Hietanan.

Users have already booked 3 million trips through the company’s app since its launch and the company is continuing to expand not just in North America, but in Asia as well. There are plans in the works for the company to launch operations in Singapore.

Giving consumers more options for transit through a single gateway could reduce demand for vehicles, but some analysts argue that it won’t do much to alleviate congestion on roads. Consumers, they argue, will choose the convenience of rideshare over mass transit and could actually increase.

As Richard Rowson, a mobility consultant from the UK noted in this post:

MaaS doesn’t implicitly mean a net decrease nor increase in the number of road vehicle miles. The changes are complex, but in balance look likely to result in an increase.

Factors such as migration from private car to public transport should cause a reduction, but migration from train and bus, to private hire and smaller demand responsive buses will cause an increase. Other factors such as ‘positioning’ movements as ‘on demand’ vehicles are positioned to exploit demand also create journeys.

Smart journey planning and navigation systems should make better use of available road capacity, such as identifying alternative routes – but at the expense of migrating through traffic to local access roads.

There is the potential that having a single point of access to mobility may actually help cities push riders to favor public transportation by offering a window into amount of time using each service would take and showing users the fastest route.

Last August the company said it had raised a EUR9 million round from undisclosed investors. It had previously received capital from Toyota Financial Services and its insurance partner Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance.

June 7, 2018

These are the competitive pressures driving automakers to accelerate new tech adoption

The transformations that companies like Tesla, Uber and Lyft bring to the auto industry are changing more than just the ways car companies think about drivetrains and ownership, and its opening doors for new ways of thinking about the entire mobility industry.

That’s the word from some of Israel’s top investors from the stage at our TechCrunch Tel Aviv event.

Every aspect of the auto industry is being reshaped by technological innovation and it’s opening the traditionally closed supply chains that car makers have relied on for at least a century creating more opportunities for startup vendors in areas like sensors, software, services, and yes, even electrification.

For Michael Granoff, the founder of Maniv Mobility, Chemi Peres, the founder of PItango, and Yahal Zilka, the co-founder of Magma Venture Partners, there are at least four areas of opportunity for startups (especially startups hailing from Israel’s innovation nation) to penetrate the trillion dollar mobility market.

Artificial intelligence, new business models, electrification, and enabling sensor technologies are all areas where Israeli entrepreneurs have launched businesses, and they’re all technologies in high demand from established automakers and the upstarts that would challenge them.

“It’s not just automotive, but what Israel can bring to that,” says Zilka. “The big thing in automotive was the introduction of semiconductors. Over the next 15 to 20 years it’s going to be artificial intelligence.”

How those technologies come to market for mobility used to depend on an established supply chain, where tier 2 technology vendors would sell to tier 1 suppliers and then be integrated into the cars by the big brand original equipment manufacturers like Ford, GM, BMW, Daimler, Toyota, and the like.

Tesla’s entrance into the market and the competitive threats that Uber, Lyft, Gett and others pose to the entire automotive business model have pushed these companies to shake things up, making investments in technology for the automotive industry far more attractive.

“Only when your business is effected by the digital wave of internet and connectivity, only then do you start moving,” says Peres.

For Israel, that means a window has opened for enabling technologies like sensors, artificial intelligence, data processing, and new business models.

These new companies with names like Autofleet, otonomo, Innoviz Technologies, Oryx Vision, and Via are already establishing themselves as competitors or suppliers helping to transform the existing order.

For Peres and the other investors, automakers should expect to see even more radical changes ahead as technologies push further transformations to industrial infrastructure, the urban environment and consumer demand.

“The old generation was that you create a production facility… [and] you create masses of products, but it’s going to be completely disrupted,” says Peres. “You’re going to have much less cars and cars are going to be much more sophisticated in their services.”

Cars, Peres says, are moving to the elevator pitch — where vehicles on streets are used like elevators in buildings. “It will eliminate ownership, reduce operational costs, reduce energy costs, and will be able to get a great service and save the over 1 million people that are killed every year and the 50 million people that are injured,” Peres says.

Those changes will impact more than just the auto industry. Manufacturing will be disrupted by additive manufacturing technologies, and, eventually, advancements in nanotechnology that will allow for self-assembling machines.

Eventually, these changes are going to force more action from regulators as they grapple with how to address the increasing demand that will come with cost depreciation, according to Granoff.

“There’s going to be a pricing mechanism that is going to be required to modulate the use of roadways,” he says.

For Peres, the future may not be the use of roadways at all. “It doesn’t need to be cars on roads. It can be flying robots,” says the Pitango co-founder.

No matter what the ultimate solution is, given the Israeli entrepreneurial ecosystem, it’s a good bet that at some level there’ll be Israeli technology behind the wheel of each innovation.