INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
German startup Unu raised a $12 million funding round led by Ponooc, with existing investors Capnamic Ventures, Iris Capital, Michael Baum
and NRW.BANK also participating
The company has been building electric scooters (the motorcycle kind) and is working on new products and services.
For the past five years,
Unu has sold 10,000 scooters
The market for electric scooters is quite different depending on your country
In parts of Asia, they are massively popular and are slowly overtaking gas-powered scooters
You can see more and more electric scooters in Europe, but it still uncharted territories for the most part.
Unu is one of the successful
European manufacturers, with Govecs, BMW and others
Compared to electric cars, electric scooters present a massive advantage — weight
It much more energy-efficient to power a scooter compared to a full-fledged car.
That why batteries remain relatively small
You can open the battery compartment, pull the battery and plug it in at home
It quite heavy, as Unu battery weighs around 9 kg (nearly 20 pounds)
But it fine if you just need to carry your battery to your home and plug it in overnight every now and then.
Up next, the company plans to
release a second generation of its product
The company doesn&t have much to say just yet
But it sounds like Unu is working on connected vehicles so that Unu could work with scooter-sharing services.
There a huge market
opportunity as scooter-sharing companies are booming in Europe
In Paris alone, Cityscoot and Coup have flooded the streets with scooters from Govecs and Gogoro
There are many other companies working on similar services across Europe.
If Unu could convince a company to buy some of their scooters for
their fleet, that could lead to thousands of sales in no time
The company is working on multiple partnerships
Now let see if Unu plans to create its own service in the future and work on other types of vehicles.
