By Nick Carey
LONDON (Reuters) – Zoomo, a startup that designs and sells commercial grade e-bikes for online deliveries, said on Tuesday it had raised an additional $20 million in its latest funding round to finance European expansion and grow its software and engineering teams.
That funding brings the Sydney, Australia-based startup’s Series B total to $80 million and its total financing to over $100 million. The latest round included investments from venture capital firm Collaborative Fund and trading firm Akuna Capital.
Zoomo designs electric bikes for gig workers delivering food and groceries for a monthly fee, or to large fleets providing bikes to employees.
Its major customers include Uber’s Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Just Eat Takeaway.com NV, in an industry that prospered in the pandemic as home deliveries soared.
The startup’s subscription services start at 40 pounds ($54) a week in the United Kingdom or $20 in the United States for heavy usage of up 50,000 km (31,069 miles) per year.
Zoomo expanded to select cities in Germany, France and Spain last year, and now plans rapid further growth.
“We’re ready to really scale up aggressively across Europe,” Chief Executive Officer Mina Nada told Reuters.
Nada said Zoomo is also expanding its software and hardware teams to develop new software for customers and work on new bike forms and accessories to carry more weight.
“Our customers want to increase their order size in dollars and for us that literally means larger load sizes,” he said.
Carrying more weight should also help Zoomo branch out into package delivery, Mina said.
“We know FedEx, UPS and Amazon are racking up millions of dollars in parking fines for double parking in Manhattan,” he said.
“They’re all itching to shift as much of their fleet onto smaller form factors that are greener, faster and more affordable.”
($1 = 0.7353 pounds)
(Reporting by Nick Carey; Editing by Jan Harvey)
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