Bolt Lands $24million Market War Chest from the IFC
Easy does it they say. Hailing a ride is a lot easier now with Bolt. How crazy it was to think one could digitize hailing a ride for road users a decade ago, but for Markus Villig, it is his success story. Bolt is not without its fair share of business turbulence.
Bolt started as Taxify in 2013 with 19 years old Markus Villig as its head. Taxify launched its services in London by acquiring a local taxi company with a license to operate, but was forced by Transport for London to shut down its services. In September 2018, the company announced that it was expanding into dockless electric scooters and launched the product in Paris under the new Bolt brand. In August 2019, Bolt re-launched in London with 20,000 drivers registered on the platform. In September 2019, Bolt announced its “Green Plan”, an initiative to reduce the ecological footprint of the transportation industry and Bolt as a company. The Green Plan goals include offsetting Bolt’s contribution to the CO₂ emissions of the European transportation sector by at least 5 million tonnes by 2025 and adding more green ride-types for passengers to choose from. In March 2019 and 2020, Bolt was ranked third in the FT 1000 Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies published by the Financial Times.
In January 2020, the European Investment Bank (EIB) signed a EUR 50 million venture debt facility with Bolt. In December 2020, Bolt raised €150 million from venture capital funds. The grass kept getting greener for Bolt. Well, it got even greener as it received $24 million from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a World Bank division that engages in promoting access to on-demand mobility services in emerging economies.
The IFC is the private sector arm of the World Bank Group whose main aim is to reduce global poverty.by offering development-impact solutions through firm-level interventions- direct investments, advisory services, and the IFC Asset Management Company. IFC offers a wide variety of financial products for private sector projects to eligible firms in developing countries.
The deal between IFC and Bolt gives IFC the power provide advisory companies for Bolt. As part of mentions from the IFC, Bolt will specifically improve it transportation access in Ukraine and Nigeria which are part of the biggest growing economies in Europe and Africa respectively. The funding will act as a stimulus to Bolt’s expansion process in Eastern Europe and Africa.
Prior to the funding, Bolt has expanded to cover 200 cities in 40 countries, reached 50 million users globally and acquired more popularity when it announced a partnership with Google to appear in the Google Map’s journey planner. Now think of what Bolt can do with a $24 million funding from IFC.