Thomas O'Connell, CEO, Moby. Image: Waneska Valois
Moby was announced as one of two start-ups tasked with rolling out e-bikes by Dublin City Council in January of this year.
With an initial goal of €300,000, Dublin-based electric bicycle (e-bike) company Moby has raised almost €800,000 in a crowdfunding campaign.
Founded by Thomas O’Connell, the start-up operates a dockless e-bike share scheme, licensed to operate in Dublin City.
In January 2020, Dublin City Council said Moby was one of two companies tasked with rolling out 1,000 e-bikes across Dublin.
However, in March 2020, the company delayed its full roll-out in order to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic by providing 70 e-bikes free of charge to healthcare staff in Dublin.
At the time, O’Connell said: “Covid-19 represents an unprecedented challenge for cities and communities around the world. We must prioritise the needs our healthcare workers and systems first.”
To rent one of Moby’s e-bikes, users register via an app and scan the QR code on the bike with their phone. The bikes normally cost 10c per minute to ride and can be paused for up to two hours. They can be parked and locked at existing public bike stands around the city.
Following a successful pilot, Moby launched a crowdfunding campaign to help the business scale up. The company wrote on Spark Crowdfunding that the investment would fund fleet expansion, growth operations and bring the e-bikes to more cities.
“Having already secured €200,000 from professional Irish investors, we now want to open the round to our customers and wider investor community,” Moby wrote on its campaign page.
At the end of the crowdfunding campaign, Moby had raised more than €795,000 from 278 investors.
According to the company, the bikes have a battery range of more than 100km and Moby said that in its pilot phase of four months, 10,000 journeys were taken by 4,000 customers.
The start-up said it expects to launch into other cities and enter public-private partnerships with hopes for a fleet of up to 5,000 electric bikes nationally by 2023.
