By
Godfrey Benjamin
January 20th, 2021
Tier Mobility raised US$60m in Series B funding round led by Mubadala Capital and Goodwater Capital, with participation from AXA Germany, Evli Growth Partners, White Star Capital, Point9 and Nico Rosberg.
A micro-mobility company based in Santa Monica, California, Bird, recently closed a $275 million round in order to help put itself in a leading position in the electric scooter market. However, smaller European rivals also managed to raise money to grow their own business. German startup dubbed Tier Mobility, that manages 20,000 scooters in 40 cities in 12 countries, managed to raise $60 million, funding that, by the words of Tier’s co-founder and CEO Lawrence Leuschner, are to be invested in more advanced geographical spread.
Earlier this year Tier went on to explain itself as a “micro-mobility” player claiming it wants to evolve the scooter sector among the other transportation options. On the other hand, Leuschner didn’t want to give any further information about what those other ways of transportation could be or when they will come online.
In the meantime, the company was upgrading its fleet to a more ‘vigorous’ hardware to decrease its maintenance costs. New scooters have longevity of about 18 months and now make up some 80% of Tier’s current fleet.
Latest Series B funding is co-managed by Mubadala Capital and Goodwater Capital. Mubadala, for background, is the state fund for Abu Dhabi, which is currently the only non-European market where Tier operates. Mubadala is the company that became ‘famous’ by revealing that Softbank was backing its $400 million fund for European investments.
Board member from Mubadala Capita, Amer Alaily said:
“We firmly believe that micro-mobility as a form of transportation is here to stay, especially in Europe. We are confident that Tier Mobility is best positioned to become the leading player in Europe and globally. We are excited and look forward to building a global category leading company out of Europe.”
Other participants of this round are insurance giant Axa Germany, Evli Growth Partners, White Star Capital, Northzone, Speedinvest, Point9, Indico, Kibo Ventures, Market One Capital and Formula One racing champion Nico Rosberg. However, the valuation was not revealed.
Series A went first with a €25 million. However, this number rose to €32 million already in February of this year. Leuschner said :
“With our series A funding of €32 million, we built the fastest growing mobility company. We achieved that with a fraction of the capital of Bird and Lime. That shows how efficiently we are operating. With this round we will now accelerate the growth based on our scalable infrastructure and positive unit economics.”
He added that Tier has had around 250 accidents to date across its 10 million rides, with “the vast majority minor accidents.” He said:
“We continue to educate users, but I can’t see a significant safety issue compared to other vehicles. I think Tier is has taken a leadership role in safety with the safest scooter on the market, permanent education of our users and insurance for every driver in every city.”
Chi-Hua Chien, the star investor and Goodwater Capital co-founder who had previously been at Kleiner Perkins commented:
“Tier Mobility is not only the fastest growing mobility company in the world, but one of the fastest growing companies in consumer tech history. With phenomenal execution they have emerged as the leading micro-mobility provider in Europe on only a fraction of the invested capital of their competitors.
This is a true testament to the uniquely capital efficient and profitable model the team chose to deploy from the outset. Tier’s unique approach to operations and partnerships yields superior unit economics and defensibility.”
