Author: EU_Startups Online News

Stockholm-based Einride raises €8.5 million to expand its freight service using driverless e-vehicles

Einride, a Swedish startup that develops and provides freight transport solutions using on electric and autonomous vehicles, today announced around €8.5 million Ericsson Venturesin new funding from existing investors led by impact fund, Norrsken VC. EQT Ventures, Nordic Ninja VC, Ericsson Ventures, and other investors also participated in the round. This new round will be used to fast track the official launch of its Einride Pods and meet the overwhelming demand from existing clients including Oatly, Lidl, and more.

Einride was founded in 2016 by Robert Falck, Linnéa Kornehed and Filip Lilja, and became one of the world’s first companies to operate a truly driverless, autonomous, all-electric freight vehicle on a public road. Recently, the company launched the Einride Mobility Platform, a cloud-native transport execution system for autonomous, electric and traditional road transportation. With the platform, customers can use real-time information and actionable insights to implement s..

French healthtech Ambler raises €6 million to digitalize health transport

French startup Ambler has completed a €6 million financing round from Bpifrance (via the Digital Venture division), Idinvest Partners, Partech and Kima Ventures. It’ll use the funds to accelerate the development of its platform for connecting healthcare transporters and institutions.

Currently, non-emergency medical transport (for example for patients with kidney failure, oncology needs, rehabilitation or residency in psychiatric hospitals), is highly fragmented. Hospitals have to manually manage each trip, which could be carried out by different providers each time. Typically, managing non-emergency patient transport is a burden on both healthcare staff (booking journeys, managing incidents, etc.), as well as on buyers and the financial teams of the institutions (calls for tenders, cost control, invoicing, recovery of budget allocations, etc.).

Ambler, founded in 2018, offers a single platform to manage all inter-hospital patient transfers, making use of hospital vehicles to save bu..

Madrid-based Ontruck secures €17 million for its digital freight platform

Spanish startup Ontruck, one of Europe’s leading digital road freight platforms, has secured an investment round of €17 million led by OGCI Climate Investments (OGCI CI). Existing Ontruck investors, Cathay Innovation, Atomico, Idinvest Partners and Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures, participated in the round, with Endeavor Catalyst joining as a new investor.

Founded in 2016, Ontruck is a digital road freight platform that uses technologies to reduce the number of empty kilometers travelled by goods vehicles, making road transportation more efficient and sustainable for both truckers and companies. The startup’s zero-touch load matching of shipments to carriers has fully automated 90% of loads in main regions while providing greater flexibility for shippers by assuring 100% capacity even in urgent situations. This is done using data algorithms to predict peak demand, routing shipments to maximize carrier utilisation, and dynamic pricing to balance the marketplace.

To date, Ontruck has ..

Valencia-based Zeleros raises €7 million to lead the development of hyperloop in Europe

The Spanish startup Zeleros Hyperloop has just completed a financing round worth more than €7 million. Founded in 2016, the young company starts a new and important phase in the development of its unique version of hyperloop, the “fifth mode of transport”, the best alternative for the future to connect efficiently and sustainably long-distance routes for passenger and cargo transportation. Connections like Paris to Berlin could be reduced to less than an hour.

The fresh capital comes from Altran, Grupo Red Eléctrica and also strategic investors at national and international level, including among others Goldacre Ventures (UK), Road Ventures (Switzerland), Plug and Play (USA), and the Spanish Angels Capital and MBHA. The new funds will be used to impulse further development of Zeleros’ hyperloop vehicle and its core technologies, which place them as the best alternative to cover efficiently routes between 400 and 1,500 kilometers in distance, with special benefits such as the reduction..

Dutch e-bike scaleup VanMoof attracts €12.5 million to grow globally

Today VanMoof, the Dutch e-bike scaleup, has announced a total €12.5 million investment from one of Europe’s leading venture capital firms Balderton Capital and assembly partner SINBON Electronics. The funds will support the brand’s international expansion as it scales up to meet increased demand. The investment follows the launch success of the highly anticipated new electric VanMoof S3 & X3 bikes.

With social distancing the new reality, demand for high quality e-bikes is on the rise. Bikes are seen as an increasingly dependable mobility option compared to public transport. And governments across the globe are responding with new cycle initiatives. For example, Berlin recently implemented a one mile bike lane along a major road, and Milan will introduce a five mile cycle lane to cut car use after the lockdown. This worldwide trend supports VanMoof’s belief in the potential of e-bikes to revolutionize city travel.

“It’s a unique time to build such a meaningful partnership. Not only d..

Google and Toyota invest in WhereIsMyTransport to improve transport in developing countries

London-based WhereIsMyTransport, a startup improving mass public transport in emerging markets, has announced a €6.8 million Series A round participated in by returning investors Global Innovation Fund and Goodwell Investments, plus new strategic investment from Google, Nedbank, Liil Ventures, and Toyota Tsusho Corporation (TTC).

WhereIsMyTransport, founded in 2015, is a big data platform for sustainable mobility in emerging markets, empowering people everywhere to get where they want to go. It is mapping the emerging world’s public transport networks, to become the de facto source of information for governments and service providers to improve transport services for hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Mobility is a fundamental driver of social, political, and economic growth. In the majority world, it remains a critical stumbling block for billions of people living without reliable access to formal public transport services. They depend instead on vast, informally-run transpo..

Vilnius-based GoRamp lands €120K to grow its real-time logistics platform

Lithuanian startup GoRamp has attracted an investment of €120K from venture capital funds Startup Wise Guys, Presto Ventures and business angel Gintautas Lukauskis.

GoRamp, founded in 2017, offers a real-time logistics platform that connects supply chain members. Its main target are manufacturing and retailing companies that need to cover end-to-end logistics processes, and centralize information and documentation exchange within the complete supply chain. The startup calculates the added value of its product by three key indicators 70-4-20: up to 70 percent automated human manual tasks, up to 4 times faster information exchange across the logistics chain and up to 20 reduced logistics costs.

The transport management sector is one of the largest industries in the world, but technologically very poorly advanced. Most of the manufacturing and trading companies still have the belief that centralized and traceable logistics management is a costly luxury that requires custom IT solutions…

Barcelona-based Wind wins official e-scooter partnership with Milan city

Wind, one of the world’s leading e-scooter sharing providers, has triumphed in a public tender process to become an approved partner for micro-mobility services in the city of Milan.

Wind Mobility, founded in 2017, aims to make cities a better place by reducing traffic, carbon dioxide emission and noise, with its eco-friendly e-scooters (making it onto our list of clean-tech startups to watch out this year). Its priority for its e-scooters is availability via the app, also offering services to its clients (cities, companies, hotels and universities), such as hourly/daily rents and employee bonus programmes.

In its first expansion into Italy, Wind began researching the potential of the Milan market in February this year, and was among the first providers to apply for the tender. The successful outcome means 750 of Wind’s third-generation e-scooter models will hit the city streets from January 2020.

Wind has honed its expertise as a world leader in the micro-mobility market in more t..

Uber-rival Bolt opens new hub in Chiswick, London, surging to 1.5 million London passengers in 6 months

Bolt, one of Europe’s leading on-demand transportation platforms, today unveiled a new hub for drivers in Chiswick, west London, amid rapidly growing demand. Bolt’s passenger numbers in London have surged to more than 1.5 million in six months, five times the three-month figure.

Bolt’s new hub in Chiswick, London, is designed to bring Bolt closer to its drivers while providing them with useful services, all under one roof. It provides a permanent and convenient location for current and prospective drivers to meet members of Bolt’s customer service team in person, to ensure their experience is as quick and seamless as possible. The hub will be staffed by a driver liaison team that can answer questions and provide information directly to current and prospective drivers. There are 50 parking spaces, meeting rooms, a reception and a lounge area. The space will also be used to host events and forums.

Sam Raciti, Bolt UK Country Manager, said: “Our new London driver hub allows us to offer..

London-based Karhoo chosen for one-stop shop transport app of Spains national rail operator Renfe

The London-based startup Karhoo will provide first and last mile transport for Spanish rail giant Renfe’s new one-stop shop transport app launching in November.

Through the partnership, the 30,000 taxis and private hire vehicles (PHV) on the Karhoo platform in Spain will be integrated into Renfe’s new mobile app called ‘Renfe as a Service’ (Raas). This will enable Renfe clients to organise their journey from start to finish, aggregating any transfers through a single payment, all without leaving the application.

The Raas app is currently being piloted in journeys between Madrid and Barcelona and will be fully rolled out across Spain in 2020, integrating train, subway, taxi, PHV and scooters, among other means of transport.

Karhoo, which also partnered with the French railways SNCF this year on first and last mile travel and MaaS, was chosen by Renfe over taxi/PHV fleets and networks due to Karhoo’s unmatched regional capability. The startup was founded in 2016 and raised a total of ..