Dollaride closes a $1.5M pre-seed round, adds key team members, and responds to a $10M RFP from NYSERDA.
Hi Folks,
The final quarter of 2021 is upon us and we are excited to report that we’re ending the year with some major updates.
$1.5M Pre-seed Round - Closed
During the summer, we joined forces with Powerhouse Ventures as they invested in Dollaride to rapidly transform urban mobility systems. Alongside Powerhouse, other notable investors participating in our pre-seed round were Backstage Capital, Automotive Ventures, Driven Capital Partners, The Fund, NewAge Capital, Prehype, Visible Hands, Sorenson Impact Foundation and 1600+ angel investors (most from our equity crowdfunding campaign on Republic).
Here’s an in-depth article, written by Emily Kirsch (CEO & Founder), detailing why Powerhouse Ventures chose to add Dollaride to its portfolio: Decentralize, Democratize and Decarbonize Informal transit: Why Powerhouse Ventures invested in Dollaride.
Key Hires Added to the Founding Team
We are honored to welcome two major additions to the Dollaride team, Hayden Clarkin and Phil Hwang.
- Hayden Clarkin will be filling the role of Project Manager. He’s a transit planner and engineer who will lead transit service projects and route optimization.
- Phil Hwang is our new Head of Business Development. He’s a former startup Cofounder & COO who will lead our efforts in enterprise sales development and partnerships.
Welcome to the team!
$10M from NYSERDA to Electrify Urban Transit
Last month, Dollaride brought together a group of clean energy and social impact organizations to create CTAP, the Clean Transit Access Program. This group currently consists of four anchor companies (HEVO, BlocPower, Build Edison, and Dollaride) committed to deploying a clean transportation service throughout New York State. In late August, we submitted our CTAP proposal to NYSERDA’s Clean Neighborhood Challenge, a grant program that will award $10M to each of its three winners.
Read the CTAP Executive Summary to learn more about the partnership strategy and our clean transportation program. Also, check out the video below explaining how CTAP plans to electrify urban transit by replacing gas-powered dollar vans with electric vehicles.
Electrifying Urban Transit With Dollaride (Clean Transit Access Program, CTAP)
Dollaride Testing Payments on the Gateway JFK Route
After an outstanding launch and promotion of our Queens-based route with GatewayJFK, we have successfully transitioned from free rides to paid rides in September. Since September 27th, approximately 10-12% of the route’s total daily ridership has been converted into daily paying riders.
We’re currently experimenting with growing ridership on the route and testing our in-app payment features. Although corporate sponsorship has proven to be the most robust and reliable revenue source, there’s clearly a segment of daily riders who are willing to pay a premium for commuter van service. We intend to fully understand what are the upper bounds of service and ridership revenue (per route), by deeply engaging with more free and paid riders.
As always, thanks for your continued support and be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter for additional updates and news!
If you have any suggestions or advice, please reply back. We would love to hear from you!