French startup Cityscoot is raising a $25.6 million (€23.6 million) funding round from Allianz France, Demeter as well as existing investors Groupe RATP and Banque des Territoires. The startup is also raising at least $6.5 million (€6 million) in debt in order to finance its service.
Cityscoot is a free-floating electric scooter service (moped scooters). Users can locate and unlock scooters using a mobile app. You can then park it and lock it again.
The service is currently live in Paris, Nice, Milan and Rome. With today’s funding round, the startup plans to expand to two new European cities, starting with Barcelona in May 2020. Cityscoot will operate a fleet of 8,000 scooters.
In Paris alone, Cityscoot handles 15,000 to 25,000 trips per day. Each trip lasts 15 minutes on average. Given that you pay €0.24 to €0.34 per minute, it means that Cityscoot is generating tens of thousands of euros of revenue per day in Paris.
Over the past few months, Cityscoot has partnered with Uber so that you can locate and unlock scooters straight from the Uber app. It looks like the integration isn’t live yet.
Cityscoot’s main competitor Coup shut down a couple of months ago. “Even though Coup is a well-known brand in this market with a loyal customer base that regularly uses our services, operating Coup in the long term has become economically unsustainable,” the company said at the time.
Unit economics could be the reason why Cityscoot recently raised its prices. If you don’t top up your account, you now pay €0.34 per minute instead of €0.29 per minute. You pay less if you buy prepaid packages. This could be a great way to foster recurring use.
Source: TechCrunch
