Image credit: TIER
After being selected as one of the operators for the London rental e-scooter trial, Berlin-based micro-mobility company, TIER Mobility, has today announced that it has secured $60M (approx €49.1M) of asset-backed financing from Goldman Sachs. This is TIER’s first debt facility as it believes this will help the startup to fuel its e-scooter fleet expansion this year.
This debt funding follows the company’s recent $250M Series C round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Besides London’s e-scooter tender, the company has also had similar success in its Paris and Dubai bids.
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Alex Gayer, Chief Financial Officer at TIER, says, “The size of this highly scalable asset-backed debt facility is a game-changing first in micro-mobility, accelerating our expansion and cementing our market leadership in Europe. This facility leverages our recent equity raise and will enhance our capital-efficient growth.”
Capital utilisation
In order to extend TIER’s international coverage, the funds will help the startup to cover strategic growth markets as well as invest in its fleet of electric scooters, bicycles and mopeds.
Besides, the new capital will also help drive the expansion of the TIER Energy Network. With this innovation, TIER’s battery charging stations will be installed in retail stores across Europe and the Middle East to power electric vehicles. Through this, users can easily swap depleted vehicle batteries for charged ones at a network of charging stations hosted by local businesses and will be rewarded with a free trip every time they swap.
Ben Payne, MD at Goldman Sachs, says, “Even amid a global pandemic, TIER has established a proven track record of profitable unit economics and asset longevity. We are excited to help the European leader extend sustainable mobility to more people across the world.”
Everything about TIER Mobility
TIER was founded in 2018 with its leadership team based in Berlin and London. It offers e-scooters, e-bikes, and e-mopeds among its growing suite of multimodal options, and integrates with 30 different public transport providers. Currently, the company operates in 100 cities in 12 countries across Europe and the Middle East.
TIER is also a climate-neutral, a UN 50 Climate Leader, and its CEO & co-founder has pledged to donate his entire stake in the business to sustainability causes from which he will not financially benefit.
The company is already profitable and recently secured significant external funding to expand its unique Energy Network - which utilises British battery technology manufactured in Oxfordshire – into cities seeking to benefit from the air quality, high street and consumer benefits of rider-swappable batteries.
TIER’s battery-swapping technology and fully owned operations (which utilises electric cargo bikes and electric vans) eliminates the need to transport the vehicles to warehouses for charging. This reduces the operational costs as well as emissions and has enabled TIER to remain fully climate-neutral since January 2020.
Expansion in Europe
In recent years, the demand for shared electric scooters and other micro-mobility modes have made their place in the local transit sector, and TIER believes it is at the forefront of the sustainable transport revolution.
Earlier this year, in April, the company expanded its footprint in Central and Eastern Europe by acquisition of Makery – a Hungary-based software development firm. Makery provides digital services that include product strategy, product design, engineering, testing and quality, project management, training and support, and staff augmentation. The Hungarian company will support TIER’s product and tech team during the micro-mobility provider’s growth journey.
The company expects to be the only provider in Hungary to use e-scooters with swappable batteries, which it believes will cement its leadership as the most sustainable micro-mobility provider.
As part of its European expansion, TIER also announced that it would launch its service in Slovakia in the near future and plans to roll out its vehicles in Ireland when the Irish Government passes its e-scooter legislation.
In the last three years, the company has managed to expand its e-scooter, e-bike, and e-moped services to 100 cities, including Paris, Berlin, Oslo, and Dubai. With its recent launch in Poland, the company has entered its 12th market and continues to further expand its footprint in Europe.
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