Singaporean shared mobility operator Beam has raised $93 million in a Series B financing round aimed at fueling its expansion plans into new Asian territories. The financing round brings the total amount of funding raised by the company to $135 million.
Beam is operational across 35 cities across New Zealand, Australia, South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand, where it operates e-bikes and e-scooters. The company is looking at venturing into newer territories in the continent including countries like Turkiey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines.
Apart from venturing into newer territories, the startup plans on introducing a new 5th generation Beam Saturn e-scooter by the second half of the year, and the funding raised will go into this. According to co-founder and CEO Alan Jiang, this new scooter will be equipped with an updated version of Beam’s safety platform nown as Micromobility Augmented Riding Safety (MARS) which helps riders to protect pedestrians and enhances local government’s control over where e-vehicles can park or ride.
The company’s existing technology includes dead reckoning and on-edge geofencing and the imminent Beam Saturns will be better than its predecessors. It will come with a feature Beam is calling Pedestrian Shield. This is an onboard AI camera that can instantly and accurately detect pedestrians and avoid accidents from happening. This AI camera can automatically detect footpaths so as to automatically reduce vehicle spped or bring the vehicle to a complete halt.
The company will be testing the AI feature before releasing it in the second half of the year, specifically the third quarter. According to a spokesperson, the techynology is being developed with an unnamed R&D partner.
The imminent electric vehicle will also come with 12-inch wheels. They are 20 percent bigger than the everyday e-scooter wheels combined with hydraulic nsuspension. They’d also be able to go 110km before needing to swap batteries – which is double the average e-scooter’s capability, Beam said.
The startup also has plans of adding a new e-moped by the second half of the year. The company expects e-moped to make one-third of its total fleet by 2024.
According to CEO Alan Jiang, the company’s reveneue has grown by 15 times since 2020. This growth came amidchallenges posed by the pandemic, and regulations around micromobility in some Asian countries. He also assured that the company works with regulators in every location where it is present to ensure smooth running for its business and increased user experience. Micromobility is gaining widespread acceptance in all of Asia and Beam’s CEO says “Our goal is to shift ‘single person journeys’ onto shared small electric vehicles, which are step function more environmentally friendly for cities and cost-efficient for consumers”.
The series B funding round was led by Affirma Capital and saw participation from Sequoia Capital India, Hana Ventures, ICT Capital, EDB Investment (EDBI), AC Ventures, RTP Global and Momentum Venture Capital. The Series B round brings the startups valuation to three digits, according to the company’s CEO who refused to say exact figures.
Ibhadojemu Lucky Emmanuel is a graduate of Education and Economics from the University of Benin. He has a passion for tech and business and has been writing professionally for over a period of five years. He's written across various topics and segments and knew tech-business was it when he first stumbled on it. He has a great passion for music and arts, and wants to visit as many countries as he can someday.
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