- General
- February 6, 2019
- 6 minutes read
Lime Raises Additional $310 Million At $2.4 Billion Valuation
image : Lime Lime, the San Mateo headquartered on-demand provider popular for its scooters, bikes and also now cars that…
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| image : Lime |
Lime, the San Mateo headquartered on-demand provider popular for its scooters, bikes and also now cars that users can utilize for short trips, has announced it has raised an additional $310 million in funding led by new investors, Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Fidelity, Alphabet’s GV and IVP.
Existing investors Coatue Management, DCM, Fifth Wall, GGV Capital and Singapore’s GIC and also new investors GSV Capital, FJ Labs, Bling Capital, St. Augustine Partners and Europe’s GR Capital participated in this round that values Lime at $2.4 billion. Lime has now raised $855 million in total according to Crunchbase data. The funding comes after reports of Lime and competitor Bird looking to raise more cash at higher valuations to fuel its operations.
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| A woman stands beside a Lime on-demand shareable vehicle
image : Lime
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Lime says over 10 million sign-ups have been made so far on its service, with 34 million trips in total taken on a Lime vehicle. The company also says it has seen a 5.5x increase in trips in the last seven months alone. The median age of its riders is 32 with over 20% of its riders aged above 40. Lime is the most popular app in New Zealand and the number one travel app in countries including Austria, France, Poland, Greece, Portugal, Spain and the Czech Republic.
It operates in 15 countries, spanning over a hundred cities, towns, universities, company campuses and communities. Founded in 2017, Lime stands a leader in the on-demand transportation industry, mainly in the field of e-scooters which has been a busy space in recent times. Fellow on-demand scooter company Skip was reported to have raised a $100 million round in December, Y Combinator backed Grin raised $45 million in October, Ford acquired another e-scooter startup Spin in November.
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| A Lime bike
image : Lime
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Companies like Taxify and also Uber and Lyft, the two biggest names in the ride-hailing space also have also established operations in this space. Uber purchased Jump Bikes in April 2018 for a reported $200 million while Lyft also acquired Motivate, another major player in the bikeshare scene for a reported $250 million.
