VanMoof raises 34 million euros
The Dutch e-bike manufacturer VanMoof has raised another 34 million euros from investors. The Series B funding comes only a few months after a 12.5 million euro investment in May and is meant to support VanMoof’s global expansion.
The goal is to secure the company a higher market share for e-bikes in Europe, North America and Japan. The new financing brings VanMoof’s total investment to 61 million euros.
VanMoof was founded in 2009 by brothers Taco and Ties Carlier and specialises in electric bicycles. The high-quality bikes of the Amsterdam-based startup already sold well, but the Corona-related lockdown has apparently led to a real order boom: Global growth during this period was 220 per cent.
From January to the end of April 2020 alone, the company sold more e-bikes than 2018 and 2019 combined. Germany was the largest and fastest-growing market with a growth rate of 323 per cent, around half of VanMoof’s business now comes from Germany.
A development that has also convinced investors and raised hopes for a longer period of growth. The venture capital company Balderton Capital, the American investment fund Norwest Venture Partners and the British venture capitalist Felix Capital have all participated in the B-series.
Antoine Nussenbaum, co-founder of Felix Capital said: “VanMoof stands out not only because they master the hardware and software parts of their e-bikes, designing everything in-house, but also because of their guaranteed quality thanks to ownership over the supply chain in between.”
Ties Carlier sees the success of e-bikes as “inevitable”, but Covid-19 have accelerated these developments. “As social distancing becomes the new reality, public transport and long waits in traffic are less appealing than ever,” says the younger of the Carlier brothers. “E-bike adoption was an inevitable global shift that was already taking place for many years now but COVID-19 put an absolute turbo on it”.
The 34 million euros will be used to finance further projects in addition to expansion: Delivery times are to be reduced, but services via the VanMoof app are also to be expanded. The company’s bicycles – currently the S3 and X3 models – have a built-in GPS receiver. This enables the bikes to be located in the event of theft and returned to the customer by VanMoof’s “bike hunters”. Through such services (for just under 100 euros per year), the company generates revenues beyond the mere sale of the bikes. At around 2,000 euros, VanMoof bikes are considerably cheaper than many others on the market.
VanMoof now has 290 employees, and this year the company aims to reach its sales target of 100 million euros – in 2018 it was still ten million euros.
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