Helvetia invests in Chargery
Through its Helvetia Venture Fund, the Swiss insurance company Helvetia is now investing in Chargery, the Berlin mobile charging service for electric cars. These funds should enable Chargery to expand its services into other cities.
Also participating in the financing round with Helvetia, is VinciVC – a venture capital company of Inci Holding. As yet, information on the size of the investment has not been released.
The Berlin startup has enjoyed considerable attention to date: Among others, at the end of 2018, car rental company Sixt acquired a stake in Chargery. Both Sixt and Drive Now avail of Chargery’s services.
Chargery‘s goal is to reduce the downtime of electric fleets in cities. When a car-sharing electric car has a low charge level, Chargery employee rides an electric bike with a large power bench in the bike trailer, to the location of the electric car wherever it is in the city. The energy storage device is connected to the vehicle, secured and picked up again after charging. The advantage of deplying electric bikes for this task within cities is that electric bikes are less likely to be caught in traffic jams.
Chargery also offers other services, such as cleaning the interior of the e-vehicles or minor maintenance work. With shared mobility and electromobility, Helvetia sees that Chargary has established itself in two major growth markets over the past 18 months.
“As the sole technology-based full-service provider in the field of shared electromobility, Chargery is in an excellent position in a growth market. This deal offers interesting cooperation possibilities to Helvetia,” says Martin Tschopp, Head of Corporate Development and responsible for the Helvetia Venture Fund. Another business model could develop with the startup is in the insurance field: Helvetia is examining whether and in what form Chargery’s services can be made available to its own insurance customers.
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