Bolt raises big (again) as it looks to expand its mobility empire

▤ Summary

Money has come thick and fast for Estonian startup Bolt, which announced today a fresh round of €628m, at a valuation of €7.4bn, after raising €600m in August last year. We’re able to do that because we already have this platform built out, so once you already operate in all these countries you have payments, legal teams in place, etc, it’s so much easier for you to roll out new products on top of this ecosystem.” Bolt’s top-line numbers are impressive: since October 2020 the company has grown from having a presence in 200 cities to over 400 across Europe and Africa; from 2000 employees to over 3000; from 50m passengers to 100m customers globally; and from a valuation of around €2bn to €7.6bn today. You have a dozen startups that come, everybody invests, and a couple of years later actually only a few are going to be remaining because generally these are very high-scale industries – unless you’re doing probably billions in GMV [gross merchandise value] you’re not going to make it.” He adds that there are currently a lot of inflated valuations, with many touting crazy profit margins that they expect, sometimes 15-20%. “There are hundreds of cities for us to expand into in the 15-plus countries where we operate Bolt Food.” The startup has now established dozens of black stores – distribution centres that cater exclusively to online shopping – across Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Croatia, Slovakia and Sweden, and next year expects that number to reach into the hundreds. It really shows the benefit of the ecosystem kicking in.” Ride hailing remains Bolt’s biggest business – which Villig puts down to the fact that they’ve been working in that space for the longest – but the other four services are faster-growing.

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Bolt Technology OÜ

$1B+