Drivy raises €8 million and acquires competitor Buzzcar

A little under a year after having closed a €6 million round, car sharing startup Drivy has raised a second round, this time at €8 million.  For their latest round Via-ID (investment fund of Mobivia Group) and BPIfrance joined the round, with previous investors Alven Capital and Index Ventures reinvesting.  Via-ID’s coming board as investor was precipitated by Drivy’s announcement that they’ve acquired their principal competitor, Via-ID portfolio company Buzzcar.
Founded in 2010 by Paulin Dementhon, Drivy quickly established itself as a leader in the sector, particularly in France. With 400-500k users and 26k cars shares available, they now have more vehicles available in their network to share in Paris than Autolib. Taking 15% on each transaction (with 15% going towards insurance and 70% the renter), their revenues have also shown strong growth, having tripled their revenues last year to almost €2 million.  Most of their business up until has been focused in France, but they see substantial potential in Europe.  Last year they kicked-off their European expansion by launching in Germany, will be launching imminently in Spain and are planning to launch in another western European country by end 2015.
Their first priority with latest round will be to invest in R&D, namely making the experience more seamless ad introducing new functionality.  They also aspire to enlarging the usage occasions for car sharing, so making car sharing via Drivy a reflex for short as well as long distances. Currently, the car share rental time and distance via Drivy are 3 1/2 days and 100km respectively. This, coupled with the Buzzcar acquistion, should also help them substantially in reaching their next big goal – 3 million users and 300k car share vehicles in their network.  All this will require them to double the size of their team to 60, which they kicked-off in earnest at our Paris Startup Job Fair last weekend.