One Dutch startup which has created rapid waves in the ecosystem this year is Felyx. Listed by leading tech magazine Wired, in ‘Europe’s 100 hottest startups,’ the fast growing e-scooter sharing startup has no time to look back and has some aggressive missions planned for the road ahead.
Recently our founder Remco Janssen got an opportunity to meet the founder of the company, Quinten Selhorst, during at the exclusive chat at the famous startup talkshow Digital Waves. While the Amsterdam-based startup has now forayed its services to another city in the Netherlands, ie. Rotterdam, Quinten revealed a lot more about what else to expect from Felyx in 2018.
The Rotterdam approach!
As quoted by Quinten, Felyx has some aggressive marketing plans for scaling up its services in Rotterdam, “In Amsterdam, we currently have 108 scooters, however, in Rotterdam we are starting with 324 e-scooters. So we are putting a lot of marketing efforts in 3-weeks time in order to show how fast we can make it aware to the common public in the city.”
According to the company, the dark green e-scooters will quickly become a part of Rotterdam’s street scene, with the aim of allowing users to contribute to a cleaner and quieter city.
Felyx do not cause nuisances in Amsterdam
The shared bicycles in Amsterdam caused a lot of inconveniences because they were left in places where it is not allowed to park. However, Quinten assures that does not happen with the Felyx. The company additionally incorporates GeoFencing service where if the user goes outside the permitted zone, the scooter automatically stops working and they are forced to return to a place in the area where they operate. There is a GPS system connected in the scooter to ensure that location as well.
“We use Geofencing technology, which means, we exclude certain parts where the municipality of Amsterdam says it’s forbidden to park scooters. If a user is parking, they’ll get an error message saying, you’re out of the parking zone.”
Pan-Europe expansion on the card
While Quinten didn’t exactly reveal where Felyx is planning to expand its services next, but he did explained, “I think like Belgian cities, German cities, French or Scandinavian cities, all the cities, which have mobility issues and which have a size similar to Amsterdam, Rotterdam is something we might look foward to in the future.”
He also added, “I believe in next 5 years, we’ll be operational in most of the European cities for a minimum and the consumers will be able to use Felix combined with other mobility providers.” In addition, Quinten also mentioned that the company is in talks with Uber as well for future collaboration but didn’t exactly mention what it’s all about.
So far, Felyx has raised over €4.1M in funding over 4 rounds, whereas the latest funding came from a Debt Financing round on Jul 31, 2018.
Take a look at the full interview below.
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates.
