E-scooter company Fenix acquires Palm for $5M, gains entry to Turkish market, According to TechCrunch Abu Dhabi-based micro mobility company Fenix has acquired Palm, a shared e-scooter company in Turkey, for $5 million – the precise amount the corporate raised last November and this past February during its seed round.
Despite having not even raised a Series A round yet, Fenix scrounged together the cash and equity needed to fund this buy and stretch into Turkey, calling on additional capital from existing investors Maniv Mobility and Emkan Capital. Fenix wouldn’t disclose the terms of the acquisition or what proportion it recently raised.
This acquisition marks Fenix’s expansion into its fifth Middle Eastern country and 13th city since its launch last November, making it the most important shared micro mobility operator within the region, before regional competitors KIWIride, Careem and Arnab Mobility.
“Palm features a meaningful presence in Istanbul, and therefore the city are going to be a serious focus for our company within the near term,” Jaideep Dhanoa, co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “Beyond Istanbul, we see tremendous opportunity across Turkey. The country is home to 83 million people and there are 24 cities with 1,000,000 or more people. Mersin, for instance , is another coastal city Palm operates in today where we’ll still invest.”
Berhan Goskin and Alican İstanbullu, Palm’s founders, will still lead the corporate and Fenix’s expansion plans across Turkey. Existing Palm shareholders also will migrate over and support Fenix’s efforts to steer the market in Turkey, consistent with a press release from the corporate .
The Palm acquisition not only hands off Palm’s fleet of around 1,500 Ninebot e-scooters to Fenix, bringing the startup’s total vehicle take stock to 10,000, but it also gives Fenix a built-in permit with Istanbul, a city of 15.5 million people.
“Recently the Turkey Ministry of Transport legalized shared e-scooters nationally during a very progressive and pro-competition manner,” said Dhanoa. “This regulatory clarity increased the attractiveness of the marketplace for investment and was a big motivator for the transaction. There are several local market requirements to qualify for a five-year license which is partially why we went in inorganically. With Palm we now have a five-year license for e-scooter sharing in Turkey and expect to receive permits in a number of the very best potential districts within the country.”
Istanbul’s first round of applications for capped e-scooter permits were due earlier this month, therefore the acquisition means Fenix didn’t got to apply for a replacement license. It will, however, need to suits all local Turkey market requirements.
Fenix says it’ll begin deploying several thousands of its vehicles, laden with built-in hand sanitizers, in August, adding to Palm’s existing fleet, which can be rebranded to reflect new ownership. Fenix didn’t disclose who its manufacturing partner is for its vehicles, but told TechCrunch that it’s “not one among the standard suspects” which the partnership is exclusive and involves a co-development of custom vehicles for his or her markets.
As a part of its entry into Istanbul, Fenix also has plans to determine an R&D center on the bottom for software and hardware so as to “develop breakthrough technologies for the Turkish market and to export to the Greater Middle East region,” consistent with a press release .
“Turkey has a number of the highest tech talent within the broader region, and now that we’ll even be operating there, we’re excited about leveraging that talent pool to assist us craft solutions for the Turkey market, also as apply them to the remainder of our network,” IQ Sayed, co-founder and CTO, told TechCrunch. “This holds for all our offerings and every one parts of our tech stack, but I’m especially looking forward to augmenting our payments tech, machine learning and IoT capabilities there. we’ll even be looking into local manufacturing opportunities.”