Author: azeeadmin

Aspiration, the financial services business for socially conscious consumers, is back with another environmentally friendly offering for its customers — this time, it’s a credit card.

The Los Angeles-based company, which has raised roughly $250 million from investors including the celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr.’s Footprint Coalition, and Orlando Bloom and more traditional institutional investors like AlphaEdison, Capricorn Investment Group, the Omidyar Network, and Allen & Co., wouldn’t say how much about the terms of the card or the credit limits available.

What Aspiration co-founder Andrei Cherny did discuss was the company’s sense of the significance of its new offering.

“There are plenty of credit cards out there that let you rack up miles, this is the only card that rewards you for taking miles off of the planet,” Aspiration co-founder and CEO Andrei Cherny said in a statement. “For the first time, you can have a climate change-fighting tool right in your wallet.” 

The key to Aspiration’s offset services is nothing more or less than tree planting. It’s the easiest way for consumers to eventually cancel out the greenhouse gas emissions associated with daily living in the U.S.

Every time someone uses the card, Aspiration will have one of its global reforestation partners plant a tree. If a customer uses Aspiration’s credit card 60 times, the resulting trees that are planted are enough to offset the carbon emissions from an average American home

“What we’re doing is basing it on the average American’s carbon footprint,” Cherny affirmed. “Every time you make a purchase Aspiration plants your tree. The way the math works out. The average carbon impact of the average tree when you have 60 of them you eliminate the emissions from an average American home.”

Using Aspiration’s app, which includes other tools for consumers to gauge the social impact of their purchases, credit card customers can track their progress towards offsetting their emissions. For every month in which a user gets to carbon zero, Aspiration will reward them with 1% cashback on their credit card purchases.

Cherny said the company works with accredited partners and uses satellite imaging and on-the-ground monitoring to ensure that the forestation projects are proceeding according to plan and that the trees aren’t being harvested.

The company isn’t just doing this out of a sense of corporate responsibility there’s actually an arbitrage case where the planting of seeds becomes a profit center (however nominal) for the company.

“As we get to scale that will be the case,” Cherny said. “We are not a nonprofit, we’re a for-profit company dedicated to saving the planet. Until people can make a profit off of saving the planet in the same way people have been profiting on destroying the planet, there are going to continue to be problems… If only oil companies and incumbent banks can make money by destroying the planet, then we’re in trouble.”

Lidar companies across the planet are going SPAC, but Baraja isn’t in a hurry to go public. The Australian lidar maker has raised a $31M B round to continue the deployment and development of its “unique and ingenious” imaging system, with participation beyond the usual VC suspects.

Baraja’s lidar uses what the company calls SpectrumScan, letting physics do the hard work of directing the light. By passing its laser through a prism, different wavelengths of light go in different directions — and when it comes back, it takes the same path. Actually it’s a bit more complicated than that, but if you’re curious check out my article from CES last year, which lays it out in more detail.

The company hasn’t been lying still since then, even though the most obvious application of lidar — autonomous vehicles — hasn’t exactly taken off in the meantime. As co-founder and CEO Federico Collarte told me back in 2020 of the lidar industry, “if you don’t differentiate, you die.” And Baraja has done so not just with its tech but its approach to the market.

Lidar, it turns out, is actually useful in a lot of industries, but most lidar units contain highly complex mechanical elements that can be affected by heat, cold, and other environmental factors. Not so much Baraja, which has only one moving part (and that very slowly and steadily, somewhere in the optics) and can withstand intense conditions for a long time.

Collarte explained that one of their big customers over the last two years has been the mining industry, and you can imagine why. Creating accurate 3D images of mines is a task that’s incredibly difficult for humans or ordinary cameras, but practically purpose-built for lidar. That is, if the lidar can withstand the heat, cold, and forces found in mining operations.

“In mining, the key is reliability and ruggedization,” Collarte said. “We’ve had units in mines in the Australian desert for two years. We had one back for RMA — you saw that our units are painted kind of an electric blue — the paint was totally eroded. It was bare metal, but the thing was still working.”

Because the more sensitive bits, the laser and receiver, can be hidden deep in the body of the machine and connected via fiber optic to the “dumb” lens and prism elements of the head, the device was able to survive years of scorching sands. Not a claim many lidar makers can make!

The partnership with Hitachi Construction Machinery was successful enough that the company decided to invest.

This strategic investment is part of Collarte’s plan to diversify its financial backing. “We’re trying to bring in the type of investors who have a very long timeline — institutional investors,” he said.

Though venture capital is still part of it, he pointed to new investor HESTA, something like a pension fund, as an example of the kind of backer he was looking for in addition to VCs. That said, previous investors Blackbird Ventures (which led) and Main Sequence Ventures returned for this round as well as some new VCs. The $40M Australian amounts to $31M U.S. — slightly less than its $32M U.S. round A in 2018, but it doesn’t feel like a down round.

Collarte emphasized the importance of operating as a business and not just as an extended R&D process.

“If you’re working just on technology, that’s fine, but you won’t have sales and customers today,” he said. “We have revenue and real world applications — we’re exercising those muscles. We’re getting good at customer support, installation, warranty, failure modes — it’s a whole area of the company that needs to be exercised over and above pure R&D.”

In addition to mining, shipping is another area where lidar can be exposed to punishing conditions, he noted, saying that a major Australian port was using Baraja units as part of its push towards autonomy.

But R&D is still a huge part of the company’s plans for the funding. The biggest changes are, in the short term, offering an integrated “one-box” system that some vehicle makers and suppliers may find simpler to work with. And in the long term the fundamental architecture of the system will evolve as well.

“We come from a background in telecom, and they’ve moved from bulk optics [meaning lenses, prisms, and fiber optic bundles] into photonics and integrated circuits. So we’ve always had that in mind,” said CTO and co-founder Cibby Pulikkaseril. “My roadmap is to get these onto chips so that it doesn’t look any different from any other chips in the vehicle.”

Collarte pointed out that while miniaturization is difficult for everyone, it’s especially hard for the scanning mechanism in lidar, which often must be of a certain size and cover a certain arc in order to direct the laser properly. He proudly said they are already well on their way to a solution that is unique to their SpectrumScan method.

The next year, they asserted, will be a major one for Tier 1 suppliers and others racing to level 4 autonomy. Perhaps that’s why so many lidar companies opted to go public via SPAC in the last one. But that’s not the plan for Baraja, at least for now.

“It’s something we’re keeping an eye on,” said Collarte. “But we’re not in a rush.”

In addition to the VCs mentioned above and Hitachi Construction Machinery, the following investors joined the round: Regal Funds Management, Perennial Value Management, and InterValley Ventures.

Pacaso, a less-than-one-year-old startup that is out to give more people a chance at second home ownership, announced Wednesday that it has received $75 million in growth funding at a $1 billion valuation.

Greycroft and Global Founders Capital co-led the $75 million in equity financing, which is notable for a few reasons.

For one, the team. Former Zillow executives Austin Allison and (CEO and co-founder) Spencer Rascoff came up with the concept of Pacaso after leaving Zillow together about 18 months ago. (Publicly traded Zillow today has a market cap of $32.9 billion.) The company gives people the ability to purchase shares in, and become co-owners of, a second home.

“We realized that owning a second home had been a very impactful luxury in both of our lives. We’re both fortunate enough to have second homes, and it made a huge difference to us and our friends and family,” Rascoff said. “What we set out to do was to try to democratize access to second homeownership so that it can be something that is not just a luxury available to the 1%, but hopefully it can be available to many tens of millions of other people around the world.”

Something else that stands out about this raise is that Pacaso, which just launched in October 2020, has achieved unicorn status faster than any other company, according to an internal company analysis of Crunchbase data.

“Pacaso is growing incredibly quickly, faster than anything I’ve never been a part of,” Rascoff told TechCrunch. “And the reason that it’s growing so quickly is because consumers love the concept, and they love the idea of being able to own a second home at a much less expensive price metric.”

In addition to the equity financing announced today, San Francisco-based Pacaso has also secured $1 billion in debt financing from First Republic Bank and funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group LLC. At the time of its launch last fall, the startup had raised $17 million in a Series A led by Maveron, as well as $250 million in debt financing.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy and Theresia Gouw of the Acrew Diversify Capital Fund; First American Financial; Shea Ventures; Jeff Wilke, former CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer; and other notable angel investors also participated in the latest financing.

With a unique co-ownership model made possible via the creation of a property-specific LLC, the company aims to reduce the cost and hassle of second home ownership. It also gives vacation homeowners an alternative option to renting out their property.

The way it works is that Pacaso purchases a home either outright or shares in a home. The company then partners with local real estate agents to market the properties. It then sells shares in the home — from one-eighth of the home to a greater percentage.

Pacaso holds a brokerage license in more than a dozen top second home markets such as Napa, Lake Tahoe, Palm Springs, Malibu and Park City. Buyers can view curated listings on the startup’s website, which includes active listings, as well as previews of homes under consideration for purchase based on buyer demand.

In addition to curating the listings, Pacaso also offers integrated financing, “upscale” interior design, professional property management and proprietary scheduling technology.

Since launch, Picasso says that more than 500,000 people have visited the website and 60,000 “aspiring buyers” have engaged Pacaso to learn more about second home co-ownership. So far, the company has helped about 100 families become co-owners of second homes.

Allison estimates that there are about 100 million second homes around the world, with the vast majority of those vacant 10 to 11 months a year.

“On a monthly basis, that number is growing very quickly,” he said.

The company plans to use its new capital in part to expand into new markets — moving from the west coast to the east coast. It eventually plans to also expand globally — in Europe and potentially in Mexico and the Caribbean. The debt will go toward purchasing shares of more homes.

“There are many tens of millions of families who make enough money to where they have some discretionary income and about 75% of them are dreaming about owning a second home,” he said. “But they are either held back by cost or the inability to justify such a purchase. So there’s this massive problem and what we’ve come up with is a really innovative solution, which is co-ownership.”

Greycroft co-founder and partner Dana Settle described Pacaso’s business vitals as “nothing short of momentous.”

“Pacaso is creating a new category that will dramatically change how people approach buying and owning a second home,” she added.

As most venture firms are, Greycroft was also attracted to the caliber of Pacaso’s founding team.

“This is a team that knows this market incredibly well and have worked together previously,” Settle told TechCrunch. “When you see how quickly they’ve gotten up and running it’s literally a testament to that point.”

She also likened the company to Uber and Airbnb, which also took otherwise underutilized assets and turned them into a business.

“This is another opportunity to do that — leveraging technology to create more accessibility in a market,” Settle said.

To support its expansion, Pacaso has hired Nina Tran to serve as its chief financial officer. Tran took Waypoint Homes public through its merger with Starwood Waypoint and served as its CFO through its sale to Invitation Homes.

Rascoff has certainly been busy as of late. He’s also heading up Supernova Partners Acquisition Company, which recently announced it was merging with Offerpad to take that company public. Rascoff is also an investor in Doma, formerly called States Title — another proptech that is going public via a SPAC merger. He’s also backed a number of startups, including Cheese, a fintech that recently launched a digital banking platform that is aimed at primarily serving the Asian-American community, among others.

WhatsApp’s planned policy changes aren’t sailing smoothly in India, the instant messaging service’s biggest market. Indian antitrust body Competition Commission of India on Wednesday ordered (PDF) an investigation into WhatsApp’s privacy policy changes, alleging that Facebook-owned service contravened competition law provisions through “exploitative and exclusionary” conduct in “garb of policy update.”

WhatsApp didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

SpaceX has added yet more Starlink satellites to its existing constellation on orbit, with a successful delivery of 60 spacecraft this morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The mission used a Falcon 9 with a flight-prove booster that served on five previous launches, and a cargo fairing cover made up of two re-used halves from past flights.

This is the fourth Starlink launch in under a month, with prior batches of 60 sent up on March 14, March 11 and March 4, respectively. In total, that means it’s sent up 240 satellites in about three weeks, which is actually around on par with the number satellites than the second-largest commercial constellation operator, Planet, has in space in total.

The stated goal for SpaceX is to have launched 1,500 Starlink satellites in 2020, and given its progress, it looks on track to make that target at the current launch pace. Starlink should eventually grow to include as many as 10,000 or more active satellites in low-Earth orbit, but the near-term goal is to continue expanding geographic coverage of its broadband internet service to additional countries and customers.

Right now, it seems like the beta service rollout is more hardware-constrained on the ground component side, since SpaceX opened up pre-orders to anyone in a geography it services earlier this year. Customers signing up now for the Starlink antenna and modem kit are getting delivery times that extend out to the end of this year, even in areas where service is known to be available and performing well for existing beta users.

Starlink could become a massive revenue driver for SpaceX once it’s fully operational, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the plan is to eventually spin the company out once it’s past the initial infrastructure investment phase and revenues have stabilized. So far, customer seem to be having a positive experience with the network in terms of speed and reliability relative to other rural broadband solutions, but the next big test will come once the network is experience heavy load in terms of customer volume.

SpaceX has added yet more Starlink satellites to its existing constellation on orbit, with a successful delivery of 60 spacecraft this morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The mission used a Falcon 9 with a flight-prove booster that served on five previous launches, and a cargo fairing cover made up of two re-used halves from past flights.

This is the fourth Starlink launch in under a month, with prior batches of 60 sent up on March 14, March 11 and March 4, respectively. In total, that means it’s sent up 240 satellites in about three weeks, which is actually around on par with the number satellites than the second-largest commercial constellation operator, Planet, has in space in total.

The stated goal for SpaceX is to have launched 1,500 Starlink satellites in 2020, and given its progress, it looks on track to make that target at the current launch pace. Starlink should eventually grow to include as many as 10,000 or more active satellites in low-Earth orbit, but the near-term goal is to continue expanding geographic coverage of its broadband internet service to additional countries and customers.

Right now, it seems like the beta service rollout is more hardware-constrained on the ground component side, since SpaceX opened up pre-orders to anyone in a geography it services earlier this year. Customers signing up now for the Starlink antenna and modem kit are getting delivery times that extend out to the end of this year, even in areas where service is known to be available and performing well for existing beta users.

Starlink could become a massive revenue driver for SpaceX once it’s fully operational, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said the plan is to eventually spin the company out once it’s past the initial infrastructure investment phase and revenues have stabilized. So far, customer seem to be having a positive experience with the network in terms of speed and reliability relative to other rural broadband solutions, but the next big test will come once the network is experience heavy load in terms of customer volume.

Denmark-based Motosumo has scored a $6M Series A raise led by London’s Magenta Partners, alongside existing investors. The new funding will go on doubling its network of spin class instructors across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, expanding its tech team and upping its marketing.

The 2015-founded fit-tech startup has developed a system for measuring cycling cadence without additional sensors — users need only affix their existing smartphone or tablet to a stationary exercise bike to get real-time feedback on their performance. No expensive Peloton-style connected bike required… Just strap on your smartphone and pedal away on that ancient exercise bike you found gathering dust in the loft.

The startup’s focus to-date has been more on the b2b side — selling its software to fitness instructors and gyms hosting spin classes who are looking to upgrade the experience with real-time tracking. But it’s now set to ramp up it b2c business, seizing the opportunity to build at home fitness business as the coronavirus pandemic continues to make life challenging for traditional gyms.

“We’ve recently made the move to our B2C offering (Motosumo),” CEO Kresten Juel Jensen tells TechCrunch. “On the B2B side (Momentum), we have over 2,500 users and, over the last year, we passed 100,000 downloads. As we launch the B2C version with Motosumo, we are making an upfront investment in attracting users to become active members.

“The B2C marketing is just kicking in now and the performance with our early members is very positive over the past few months with an average session rating of 4.9 out of 5. We expect our Motosumo member base will grow very quickly from here.”

Motosumo applies its mobile-based quantification tech — which measures cadence, speed, distance and calorie burn — in a cycling training app that also offers interactive 3D games, team challenges and international leaderboards to up the motivational energy.

“Our movement technology is a unique enabler for Motosumo –- we empower any bike owner with the ability to get on the leaderboard, join competitions, and get feedback from our instructors,” says Jensen. “We process signals from accelerometers and gyroscopes inside smartphones or tablets to calculate your regular cycling performance metrics such as cadence (repetitions-per-minute), calories, and distance. We are not relying on any proprietary hardware, bike sensors, or heart rate monitors.

“All of these sensors can be connected for additional data, if desired by the user but it is not required. Even users with 20 year-old spin bikes with no sensors whatsoever can participate, climb the leaderboard, and race with our community. Motosumo algorithms are proprietary and trained by a machine learning loop. This has taken years to reach the accuracy, which is similar to built-in bike sensors, and this will remain a massive barrier to entry for competitors.”

Motosumo combines proprietary tracking tech with a platform that streams a schedule of live spinning classes hosted by a global network of fitness instructors. Pricing starts at (an equally Peloton-undercutting) $13 per month for unlimited access to its content.

Aside from (relative) affordability for its fit tech, it points to interactivity as a differentiator vs other offerings, touting zero delay in the livestream of classes which it says allows its instructors to give genuinely real-time feedback. Currently it has five coaches active on its platform. Another five will be onboarded over the next six weeks, per Jensen

“The Motosumo live fitness experience makes a big difference,” he argues. “With the live experience, our coaches personalize the workout, the sense of community is stronger, and the experience is more interactive.

“Motosumo offers more than 40 live workouts per week which we will grow along with our new coaches and members. On many other platforms, the live experience means 15-60 second buffered streams. We have worked relentlessly to reduce our delay to 0.5 seconds. We made that investment to provide the real studio experience, where instructors react to numbers, emojis, or whatever happens right in the moment. It’s not just greetings for anniversary ride celebrations. It’s the true studio live experience we are on a mission to deliver in all aspects.”

Tesla made headlines earlier this year when it took out significant holdings in bitcoin, acquiring a roughly $1.5 billion stake at then-prices in early February. At the time, it also noted in an SEC filing disclosing the transaction that it could also eventually accept the cryptocurrency as payment from customers for its vehicles. Now, Elon Musk says they’ve made that a reality, at least for customers in the U.S., and he added that the plan is for the automaker to ‘hodl’ all their bitcoin payments, too.

In terms of its infrastructure for accepting bitcoin payments, Tesla isn’t relying on any third-party networks or wallets — the company is “using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly,” Musk said on Twitter. And when customers pay in bitcoin, those won’t be converted to fiat currency, the CEO says, but will instead presumably add to the company’s stockpile.

In February when Tesla revealed its bitcoin purchase, observers either lauded the company’s novel approach to converting its cash holdings, or criticized the plan for its attachment to an asset with significant price volatility. Many also pointed out that the environmental cost of mining bitcoin seems at odds with Tesla’s overall stated mission, given its carbon footprint. Commenters today echoed these concerns, noting the irony of Tesla accepting the grid-taxing cryptocurrency for its all-electric cars.

As for how the bitcoin payment process works today, Tesla has detailed that in an FAQ. Customers begin the payment process from their own bitcoin wallet, and have to set the exact amount for a vehicle deposit based on current rates, with the value of Tesla’s cars still set in U.S. dollars. The automaker further notes that in the case of any refunds, it’s buyer-beware in terms of any change in value relative to the U.S. dollar from time of purchase to time of refund.

Musk also said that the plan is to expand Bitcoin payments to other countries outside the U.S. by “later this year.” Depending on the market, that could require some regulatory work, but clearly Musk thinks it’s worth the effort. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is up slightly on the news early Wednesday morning.

As the Ubers of the world continue to scale, a smaller on-demand transportation startup has raised some funding in Germany, underscoring the opportunities that remain for startups in the space targeting specific service niches. Blacklane — the Berlin startup that provides on-demand black-car chauffeur services in Berlin, London, Dubai, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Singapore and 16 other cities — has closed a round of €22 million ($26 million at current rates). After taking a majority stake in Havn, the Jaguar-hatched electric car service in London, in February, Blacklen said that it will be using this latest round of funding to continue expanding sustainable travel initiatives, and to continue expanding its existing business with more flexible options for riding.

The funding, which is being made at an upround valuation, is a sign of how the company is showing signs of growth after a year in which monthly revenues dropped 99% in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting drop in travel, and specifically people willing to be in small spaces that are shared with others.

“The global travel and mobility industries have suffered, with several players struggling between drastic cuts, hibernation or ceasing operations. Blacklane has taken the opportunity to cater to travelers’ emerging needs,” said Dr. Jens Wohltorf, CEO and co-founder of Blacklane, in a statement. “Thanks to this financing, we will continue to fast-track our innovation, with zero layoffs.”

The company said that the investment is coming from existing investors German automotive giant Daimler, the UAE’s ALFAHIM Group and btov Partners. And while it is coming at an upround, Blacklane is not disclosing any figures, nor has it ever disclosed valuation. Previous backers of the company also include the strategic investment arm of Recruit Holdings, the Japanese HR giant, and it has raised around $100 million to date, including a round of about $45 million in 2018.

The funding is coming after what has been an extremely rough year for travel and transportation startups due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with Blacklane itself seeing monthly revenues drop 99% after the pandemic hit last year, the company tells me.

Some others in the space that diversified into other areas like food delivery or other kinds of transport (eg, bikes or scooters) were able to offset declines in their more core ride-hailing services, which in the meantime were repositioned as a safer alternative to public transportation. Blacklane, however, had never positioned itself as a ride for “everyman” — its core use case were higher-end rides and airport trips (which had also died a death) — so when movement shut down, so Blacklane’s business nosedived.

It was particularly bad timing for Blacklane, considering that in the lead up to the pandemic, it looked to be on course to turn a profit on its focused model.

The reason that Blacklane has managed to raise at an upround tells another side of the story, however.

As companies in transport and travel gingerly started to show the smaller signs of recovery last summer, so too did Blacklane. It coupled that with the first steps of diversification itself.

Earlier this month, it added “chauffeur hailing” in 22 cities, an on-demand service that reduced the lead time for an order to under 30 minutes (its previous service was based on more advanced bookings). It also changed its pricing structure to get more competitive on shorter distances, since so many of the airport rides that were the basis of its revenues have yet to return.

In addition to that, Blacklane took a majority stake in Havn, an electric-based car service hatched by Jaguar, for an undisclosed sum, to spearhead a move into more sustainable travel options alongside the fleet of Teslas already operated by Blacklane.

“Worldwide travel restrictions give us a one-time chance to reset our expectations for safe and sustainable trips,” said Wohltorf in a statement. “Blacklane will recover responsibly and continue to grow while caring for both people and the planet.”

As the Ubers of the world continue to scale, a smaller on-demand transportation startup has raised some funding in Germany, underscoring the opportunities that remain for startups in the space targeting specific service niches. Blacklane — the Berlin startup that provides on-demand black-car chauffeur services in Berlin, London, Dubai, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Singapore and 16 other cities — has closed a round of €22 million ($26 million at current rates). After taking a majority stake in Havn, the Jaguar-hatched electric car service in London, in February, Blacklen said that it will be using this latest round of funding to continue expanding sustainable travel initiatives, and to continue expanding its existing business with more flexible options for riding.

The funding, which is being made at an upround valuation, is a sign of how the company is showing signs of growth after a year in which monthly revenues dropped 99% in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting drop in travel, and specifically people willing to be in small spaces that are shared with others.

“The global travel and mobility industries have suffered, with several players struggling between drastic cuts, hibernation or ceasing operations. Blacklane has taken the opportunity to cater to travelers’ emerging needs,” said Dr. Jens Wohltorf, CEO and co-founder of Blacklane, in a statement. “Thanks to this financing, we will continue to fast-track our innovation, with zero layoffs.”

The company said that the investment is coming from existing investors German automotive giant Daimler, the UAE’s ALFAHIM Group and btov Partners. And while it is coming at an upround, Blacklane is not disclosing any figures, nor has it ever disclosed valuation. Previous backers of the company also include the strategic investment arm of Recruit Holdings, the Japanese HR giant, and it has raised around $100 million to date, including a round of about $45 million in 2018.

The funding is coming after what has been an extremely rough year for travel and transportation startups due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with Blacklane itself seeing monthly revenues drop 99% after the pandemic hit last year, the company tells me.

Some others in the space that diversified into other areas like food delivery or other kinds of transport (eg, bikes or scooters) were able to offset declines in their more core ride-hailing services, which in the meantime were repositioned as a safer alternative to public transportation. Blacklane, however, had never positioned itself as a ride for “everyman” — its core use case were higher-end rides and airport trips (which had also died a death) — so when movement shut down, so Blacklane’s business nosedived.

It was particularly bad timing for Blacklane, considering that in the lead up to the pandemic, it looked to be on course to turn a profit on its focused model.

The reason that Blacklane has managed to raise at an upround tells another side of the story, however.

As companies in transport and travel gingerly started to show the smaller signs of recovery last summer, so too did Blacklane. It coupled that with the first steps of diversification itself.

Earlier this month, it added “chauffeur hailing” in 22 cities, an on-demand service that reduced the lead time for an order to under 30 minutes (its previous service was based on more advanced bookings). It also changed its pricing structure to get more competitive on shorter distances, since so many of the airport rides that were the basis of its revenues have yet to return.

In addition to that, Blacklane took a majority stake in Havn, an electric-based car service hatched by Jaguar, for an undisclosed sum, to spearhead a move into more sustainable travel options alongside the fleet of Teslas already operated by Blacklane.

“Worldwide travel restrictions give us a one-time chance to reset our expectations for safe and sustainable trips,” said Wohltorf in a statement. “Blacklane will recover responsibly and continue to grow while caring for both people and the planet.”