Singapore's Neuron Mobility gets $43.5m
Singapore-based e-scooter rental start-up Neuron Mobility has raised USD 43.5m in Series B funding co-led by GSR Ventures and Square Peg Capital.
Singapore government investor EDBI also joined the round. It follows a USD 12m Series A in 2020 also led by GSR and Square Peg with support from SeedPlus and Singapore government-affiliated Seeds Capital. Total funding to date comes to USD 77.7m.
Neuron claims to have tripled its operational footprint between the Series A and B, entering 22 new cities globally, including Korea, Canada, and the UK, while solidifying strong positions in Australia and New Zealand. The company now brands itself as the fast-growing e-scooter operator in Canada.
E-scooters are seen as one of the few niches in digitally-enabled municipal transportation where brands can effectively scale across geographies. The model is more akin to a traditional car rental business than a ride-hailing app. Singapore has proven fertile ground for the concept, with fellow local player Beam raising a USD 93m Series B round in February.
Neuron, which is currently available in 26 cities, claims a competitive advantage in a vertically integrated approach, designing and building its own e-scooters and the systems that run them. The company said proprietary technologies such as an “e-scooter brain” and various artificial intelligence functions represented significant differentiators.
Beam is in 35 cities across Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and plans to enter Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Turkey. Both companies count GPS-guided safety systems as key technological offerings.
“Cities are shifting to a more regulated way of managing shared micro-mobility, increasingly selecting the best one or two operators before awarding them long-term contracts,” Neuron CEO Zachary Wang said in a statement. “This fully validates our strategy, and the strong foundations we have built in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK give us a great springboard to scale globally.”
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