Funding News

Dublin, [06] April 2023: MOBY Bikes Holdings Ltd, (‘MOBY’ or ‘the Company’), today announced the first close (€4.1m) of a €5 million pre Series A round to accelerate its international expansion and growth.

MOBY first launched a bike sharing scheme in Dublin in early 2020. At the start of the pandemic with little on-street demand for bike rentals they quickly found an opportunity to provide e-bikes to food delivery riders as a way to maintain revenue until the restrictions eased.

This quickly grew into a large-scale international opportunity to provide “e-bikes as a service” and the company won large contracts in UK, Holland and USA with food delivery apps, logistics companies and large corporates, for whom the company supplies, manages and maintains large fleets of e-bikes. Today, ironically their largest market is Holland.

“I remember being on a call with a Dutch Manufacturer of e-bikes who could not believe we were in Holland operating fleets of bikes for delivery companies. He was partly embarrassed, ‘well are we going to start making whiskey and sell it back you guys?“ says Thomas O’Connell, CEO and Founder of MOBY Bikes.

Now with operational bases in the UK, Holland and  the USA, it has a fleet of over 4,000 e-bikes, e-cargo bikes and EAVs  (Electric Assisted Vehicles).  With the pandemic over, the company’s bike sharing business in Ireland has also expanded to Athlone, Mullingar and Tullamore, with further partnership bike share schemes with Eastpoint Business Park and the ESB.

This new infusion of capital will support the company’s growth ambitions across central Europe, where it  has recently bolstered its management and sales teams. The company will continue to focus on last-mile delivery, corporate markets, and the hotels & leisure sector. It intends to operate its bike sharing schemes in Ireland in areas where it is profitable to do so. Additionally, it has been developing proprietary app-less bike rental and innovative charging technology.

This investment follows a €1.2million seed round in late 2020, which saw the company raise €800,000 via Spark Crowdfunding and a combination of debt/asset finance and individual investors.

Commenting on the funding round, Thomas O’Connell, Founder and CEO of MOBY said: “This funding is indicative of the investor confidence in our success to date and the  large market opportunity we have as city transportation habits continue to shift towards electric bikes. Traditional micro-mobility companies have raised significant venture capital funding but have struggled to find profitability. Whereas MOBY raised very little capital and got to profitability quickly. Today we are one of the few micro-mobility companies in the world that are actually profitable, something we are very proud of and our new investors have been impressed by. It hasn’t been without a lot of hard work, believe me, scaling to five countries in two years while bootstrapped, has not been easy!”

Davin Browne,  CEO of Selenean Capital and investor in MOBY said “Selenean were thrilled to lead the latest round of investment in MOBY, a true game-changer in the B2B e-bike space. As the world continues to prioritize sustainable transportation, MOBY is well-positioned to lead the charge with their innovative technology and dedication to providing reliable, eco-friendly solutions to businesses. We are confident that MOBY’s impressive growth and success to date is just the beginning, and we look forward to working closely with their talented team as they continue to revolutionize the industry.”