cycle.land

Idea

Introduction

During our last crowdfunding campaign, our focus was on growing our peer-to-peer bike sharing community. We provided a platform which made it easy for anyone to share their bikes with one another.

Since then, we’ve grown above and beyond and have successfully worked with global companies such as OFO and Mobike to launch and manage large-scale bikeshare schemes across multiple cities. This experience has prepared us for the next stage of the company.

We have recently formed a joint venture with Youon, China's largest and most successful public bikeshare company. Youon is well known in China and is supported by Alibaba's financial affiliate, Ant Financial. Youon is the parent company to HelloTranstech (formerly Hellobike) who is a leader in mobility in China, having raised over $1.2 billion from Alibaba, with Softbank also looking to invest. You will find a summary of the Joint Venture Arrangement in the 'Documents' section of the campaign.

We couldn’t have dreamed of reaching this level of success without the backing of our community, who have been there for us since we spun out of Oxford University Innovation.

In our next phase of growth, we are excited to be opening a small crowdfunding round to bring our community on our journey once more.

Intended impact

As cities rapidly grow and develop, the strain on transportation also escalates. This has led to congestion, pollution and physical inactivity. We believe the bicycle will be a great disruptor in urban mobility. Amsterdam and Copenhagen today offer a glimpse at the future of urban mobility everywhere. Just like there, the majority of short trips in urban areas will be made on bikes. That will be great for the environment, health and happiness!

At Cycle.land we believe the future is about flexible fleets and data driven operations, which change and adapt with the ever changing needs of users and cities. We want our next venture with Youon, to launch a sustainable urban transport platform with a mixture of vehicles across Europe, to meet the demands of users in these cities.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Cycle.land closed deals with some of the world’s biggest bike sharing companies:

1. OFO - enabled them to successfully launch their product in the UK by guiding them through the regulatory landscape and advising on how best to set up launch operations.

2. Mobike - expanded them into multiple cities throughout the UK and have successfully managed efficient operations.

3. Signed exclusive joint venture partnership with Youon - parent company to the Chinese billion dollar mobility brand HelloTranstech (HelloBike) to launch mobility services across Europe. Together with Youon, we plan to deploy a fleet of bicycles, e-bikes, e-scooters and e-cars across major European cities. See the "CycleLand Joint Venture Summary" in the documents section for more information on this JV.

In addition to our focus on operations, we’ve successfully worked with local councils to implement regulatory frameworks for shared mobility. In 2017, Cycle.land was instrumental in bringing together Oxford stakeholders to adopt the Code of Conduct for dockless bike sharing companies. In 2018, we've been working with the Mayor’s office, TfL, and boroughs in London as well.

Monetisation strategy

Cycle.land generates revenue by providing services to mobility companies. We’ve proven to be able to operate efficiently and create profitable operations for our clients. Our current contracts have grown steadily and we operate across multiple cities in the UK.

Our joint venture with Youon will see the launch of 1000 bikes around London by March 2019 and 3000 bikes by September 2019. The users of our shared mobility fleet will be charged per minute/hour and/or a subscription fee.

We at Cycle.land have extensive experience successfully and profitably running data-driven operations across multiple cities.

After the last fundraising round we have increased our revenue from 20,000 to above 230,000.

Use of proceeds

The funds raised will be used to diversify the company’s revenue streams beyond peer-to-peer bike sharing, community bike sharing schemes and services to other bike sharing companies.

Specifically, we will use the funds to set up and operate our own urban mobility platform across Europe with our joint venture partner Youon.

As we are an Oxford University Incubator company, we have worked with and leveraged the expertise of university researchers at the university. This has enabled Cycle.land to work on smart IoT solutions, creating and improving our data-driven fleet management, thus helping to optimise the data and our operational efficiency. As we expand our operations throughout Europe we will be directing these funds towards increasing the efficiency of our operations platform.

We will also be investing in our marketing & branding strategy to raise awareness ahead of our exciting launches next year.