With the costs of payments, insurance, and repairs, owning your own car can be a hassle. Vilnius-based car-sharing startup CityBee relieves you of these concerns by letting you easily rent a car through its app, starting at just €.14 per minute.
Founded in 2013, CityBee Solutions, which operates car-sharing services in Lithuania and Poland, has just received €110 million in investment from its owner, Modus Group. With the funding, the startup has announced an international tender to buy more than 5,000 new cars – five times more than the company’s current stock. The new cars will make CityBee one of the biggest car-sharing companies in Europe.
The car-sharing market is growing fast. In 2018 alone, CityBee’s customers made more than 1.2 million trips. And according to research by Berg Insight, by 2022 nearly 61 million people around the world will be using car sharing services.
The expansion of CityBee’s fleet will support the company’s plans to enter the Latvian and Estonian markets, to expand its services in Poland, and to renew and enlarge its existing fleet in Lithuania.
After acquiring all the planned vehicles, the Lithuanian startup will become one of the largest providers of car-sharing services in all of Europe, alongside giants like DriveNow, which is owned by BMW and has 6,000 cars.
The company’s CEO Aurimas Čiagus said: “We intend to select the best tender offers and sign agreements with the winners in February and plan to acquire all 5,360 vehicles during 2019. They’ll expand CityBee’s portfolio of services, adding cars that are better for longer trips, electric cars, which are popular in cities, and vans and commercial vehicles. The automobiles that are being purchased run from class A to class M.”