The most advantageous French market has also been hit by the epidemic.
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account “financial graffiti” (ID: caijingtuya)
Author: waffles
Edit: tuya
According to the “Financial Graffiti” news, the US shared electric scooter company Lime was seeking E-round financing in China. According to relevant sources, in communication with potential investors, Lime’s own valuation has dropped from US $ 2.4 billion in the last round of financing to US $ 700 million.
At the same time, Lime also announced last week that Uber will lead Lime ’s latest $ 170 million financing. Other participants include Bain Capital, Google ’s parent company Alphabet and venture capital firm GV.
In a previous Uber meeting with investors, Uber had stated that the investment valued Lime at the time of negotiations at US $ 510 million, a 79% decrease from Lime ’s most recent valuation, and at the same time Uber will use it Jump, which was acquired in 2010, was transferred to Lime’s subsidiary and obtained the right to acquire Lime from 2022 to 2024.
Using China ’s shared bike experience and lessons to develop American customized solutions
In 2016, domestic shared bicycles sprang up like mushrooms, and by 2017, its leader ofo was in full swing, achieving a breakthrough in daily orders from 1 million to 30 million; operating cities changed from 10 to 250.
After witnessing the rising trend of domestic bicycle sharing, in June 2017, Chinese Bao Zhoujia and Sun Weiyao founded Lime in Silicon Valley to provide shared services for pileless bicycles, electric bicycles and electric scooters .
Lime said that at the beginning of its establishment, it hoped to use the essence and lessons learned from the bicycle sharing phenomenon in China to develop a suitable market for the US market.Continuous solution.
The founding team has conducted a half-year investigation on the feasibility of shared travel projects in the US market. However, due to the complexity of such projects, coupled with the fact that no suitable shared bike investment target has been found Back, eventually had to hatch on their own. Combine the advantages of being familiar with the US market, good at software development, and a solid foundation in the hardware supply chain to create a comprehensive advantage that handles many issues such as software, hardware, and operations.
In less than two and a half years, Lime has completed multiple rounds of financing. In June 2018, it completed a $ 250 million Series C financing, led by Google Ventures and Google parent company Alphabet, with a valuation of more than $ 1 billion; the amount of Series D financing in February 2019 was as high as $ 336 million, while Lime The valuation is also rising, reaching 2.4 billion US dollars. Become a striking unicorn.
Lime, which was established in the United States in June 2017, has entered more than 20 markets in the United States in more than three months. It cooperates with cities, universities and companies to provide non-pile and non-subsidy shared bicycle services. Entered the international market in December of that year. Then it transformed from sharing bicycles to sharing motorcycles and electric scooters. It operates in more than 100 cities and 20 countries on five continents.
The birth is so popular that it falls to the sky, and the epidemic is worsened by snow
History is always surprisingly similar. From birth to popularity, to falling into the sky, shared bicycle startups represented by Mobike, ofo, Xiaolan bicycles, etc. in the country have been acquired or are on the verge of bankruptcy after experiencing fierce competition.
Lime, who is far away overseas, has not made an exception. Today, not only has its valuation plummeted by more than 70%, and there have been significant layoffs. According to Axios reports, after Lime announced the layoff of 14% of its employees and withdrew from 12 markets in January this year, Lime plans to further lay off 80 to 100 employees, which may cause a greater blow to employees in the US and Europe.
As of January of this year, Lime has approximately US $ 50 million in cash, and its monthly expenses are approximately US $ 22.5 million, plus Lime ’sA force to be. However, the sharing economy startups are currently only seeking expansion at any cost, and it is unknown when spring will come.
In the face of the big situation, platforms such as Lyft, Uber and Bird have recently announced the scale of austerity. Earlier, online ride-hailing platform Lyft announced a layoff of 17%, and another report said Uber was considering a layoff of 20%. As a competitor of Lime in the shared scooter market, Bird also laid off 30% of its employees last month.