Bolt, a San Francisco-based electric bike delivery company, announced that it has raised US$2.5 million in its seed funding round led by Maniv Mobility, a venture capital firm investing in automotive and mobility tech startups.
The funding round for Bolt was also participated by European e-mobility venture capital firm Contrarian Ventures, individual VCs, and former executives of Deliveroo and Uber.
Bolt was co-founded in 2018 by Mina Nada, former Deliveroo and Mobike executive, and Michael Johnson, former Bain & Co consultant. The startup was launched in Sydney but has moved its headquarters to San Francisco.
The startup claims to be the world’s first platform offering logistics players Light Electric Vehicles as a Service. It provides vehicles on flexible subscriptions, including vehicle servicing.
Following the US$2.5-million seed funding round, Bolt launched in the US the world’s first platform to offer an accessible Light Electric Vehicle solution for deliver couriers and businesses.
“Being in the food delivery industry since its inception, we saw that Light Electric Vehicles were the real future of ‘last mile’ logistics, yet no one was offering the right vehicle, financing, or maintenance solution,” Nada, who is CEO and co-founder of Bolt, said.
The company said couriers using its Light Electric Vehicles have up to 30 per cent more earning potential, enabling them to make more deliveries per shift, with Bolt’s servicing networking keeping them on the road for longer.
The company seeks to increase its fleet to ten times its current size by 2020 and expand further into more cities in the US, UK, and Australia. Bolt currently operates in Sydney, San Francisco, London, and Melbourne.
The funding comes at a time when the global on-demand food delivery market is forecast to grow by 32 per cent annually through 2021 to become a US$57.59-billion industry, according to a Technavio report.
Maniv Mobility, the lead investor in the seed funding round, is venture capital firm investing in early-stage automotive and mobility technology startups. The firm is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
