Spare ready to roll with $18 million Series A funding for its on-demand transit software
Summary
Vik Hansen said Simpson brings a lot of experience in helping companies scale, something the start is definitely looking toward as its plans to grow from just over 50 people to double or triple that size by the end of 2022. He claimed that at the height of the pandemic Spare’s on-demand technology helped transit authorities maintain service as they rebuilt amid cutbacks on fixed routes because of declining ridership. “By allowing riders to seamlessly transition from an on-demand shuttle to a fixed-route rapid bus to a pooled ride-sharing via one ecosystem that brings together multiple providers on the back-end, they can have all three.” Spare’s customers number 80 across Canada, the United States, Europe, and Japan. In fact, in 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited Spare and its Japanese investor Mitsubishi Corporation in a speech he gave about Canada’s closer collaboration with the Asian-Pacific country. Transit users can request and pay for an Uber trip directly in the app, book carsharing vehicles from multiple providers, and purchase bike-share passes and unlock bikes in North American bike-share systems.