Brian O’Driscoll Included in €500k Investment in Zipp Mobility
Zipp Mobility, the Irish micromobility start-up, recently announced that it has secured a €500,000 investment as it ramps up plans to operate several shared e-scooter trials in the UK.
Investors include Brian O’Driscoll, the former captain of Leinster, Ireland and British and Irish Lions rugby teams, along with a New York based investor.
This brings Zipp’s investment to date to over €1 million which will be used to fund Zipp’s upcoming UK shared e-scooter launches. The investment comes just a week after the UK Department for Transport (DfT) approved Zipp Mobility’s e-scooter for use in these trials.
Zipp Mobility, founded by Charlie Gleeson in 2019, is headquartered at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at University College Dublin (UCD). The company is also an Enterprise Ireland High-Potential Start-Up (HPSU) client company.
Gleeson noted, “This new funding puts Zipp in a really strong position to launch trials in the UK. These are exciting times for the Zipp Mobility team and this backing is a great mark of the momentum we are enjoying as a company.”
Earlier this year the UK government announced plans to accelerate trials of rented e-scooter schemes as part of its strategy to explore less congested and greener methods of urban transport in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All UK regions are now permitted to launch e-scooter sharing schemes, in partnership with scooter firms, such as Zipp Mobility.
The Zipp Mobility e-scooter has been carefully designed with safety in mind. It features an aircraft-grade aluminium frame, 10-inch airless tyres, a swappable battery, dual braking, a wide base and a low centre of gravity. The scooters are also equipped with nano-septic handlebar wraps that reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission by 99.98%.
The Zipp Mobility e-scooter has a useful lifetime of over two years, compared to the estimated industry average of just three months. Rigorous maintenance through local on-the-ground teams will ensure this extended lifespan. The start-up further commits to green operations through its ‘end-of-life’ plan, recycling and re-using all parts when scooters do fall beyond repair. In addition, Zipp’s electric charging fleet and swappable battery is 10 times more efficient than the widely-used gig economy model.
Charlie Gleeson graduated from the UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business in 2019. In the same year he also completed NovaUCD’s mentoring programme for student entrepreneurs and the UCD VentureLaunch Accelerator Programme run by NovaUCD for early-stage start-up companies.