Sequoia, Hana lead Series A for micromobility start-up

The company received $6.4 million in seed funding in 2018 led by Sequoia, Founders Fund, ZhenFund, and Class 5 Global. Other backers include Arbor Ventures, Insignia Ventures Partners, 500 Startups, Gobi Partners, K2 Global, Pascal Capital, Maloekoe Ventures, and Cherubic Ventures, according to AVCJ Research.

Founded in 2018, Beam operates an app through which users can rent e-scooters for short journeys in select cities in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia. On completing their journeys, users must return the vehicles to docking platforms. In the future, the company also hopes to offer electric bike, electric moped, and electric car sharing services.

Beam, which does not have operations in Singapore, plans to use the fresh capital to roll out its services in newer markets and expand the size of its existing fleet. The company claims to operate the largest micro-mobility fleet in its existing jurisdictions. These do not include Singapore, which banned electric scooters from being driven on footpaths, citing rising accidents involving pedestrians. However, there are several e-scooter providers in the market.

“Beam has to work as hard to limit the downsides of e-scooters for non-riders as they do to enhance the upside for riders. The success of any new technology depends on mass acceptance, and the quicker and better we can ensure e-scooters are used and parked where they should be, the more welcoming city residents will be,” said Deb Gangopadhyay (right), Beam’s CTO.

Beam counts Alan Jiang (left), formerly head of Southeast Asia for bicycle-sharing start-up Ofo, as CEO. Jiang was formerly also a country manager for Indonesia at Uber.

The company's latest e-scooter includes swappable batteries and has a dual mechanical and electronic braking system. It says that the vehicles have also been certified as environmentally friendly by Climate Neutral, a non-profit organization.

Other start-ups offering electric scooter sharing services in the region include Yulu Motors, Fae Bikes and Booz Mobility in India; Neuron Mobility, SGBike and Telepod in Singapore. India’s Bounce, which raised $105 million in a Series D round, plans to introduce electric bikes to its fleet of dockless vehicles that can similarly be rented by users for short journeys.

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• Topics
• Early-stage
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Singapore
• Malaysia
• South Korea
• TMT
• Transportation
• Sequoia Capital