cycle.land
Social marketplace for bike sharing. We connect people with bikes!
- Location
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Oxford,
United Kingdom
- Partner
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Oxford University Innovation
Categories: Automotive & Transport Mixed Digital/Non-Digital Mixed B2B/B2C
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Investment
sought: - £100,000
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Equity
offered: - 6.00%
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Investment
amount: - £408,325
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Valuation
(pre-money): - £1,566,000
Idea
Introduction
Cycle.land connects people with bikes! We are a social marketplace for bike sharing. Our mission is to make bikes easily available and affordable to everyone everywhere. We unlock the assets of unused bikes.
At the core, we are a peer-to-peer bike sharing community, like Airbnb for bikes. We provide a platform which makes it easy for anyone to share their bikes with one another.
Also, we facilitate the design, setup and operation of smaller bike sharing schemes. These can take many different forms. We help entrepreneurs to operate their own bike sharing schemes with 5-50 strategically placed bikes. For closed communities (universities, companies’ campus) we design, setup and operate bike sharing schemes for their staff and students.
Intended impact
Cycle.land aims to be a major player in the move towards sustainable urban transport in the next few years, first locally and later globally. We are working on sustainable transport solution for Oxford and now we are ready to scale to other cities.
We believe the bicycle is the next great disruptor in urban mobility. Amsterdam and Copenhagen today offer a glimpse at the future of urban mobility everywhere. Just like there, the majority of short trips in urban areas will be made on bikes. That will be great for the environment, health and happiness!
New technologies and ideas are disrupting the way people use cars. Cycle.land aims to disrupt the way people use bikes, which ultimately will lead to many more bicycle journeys by providing people easy access to bicycles.
Our impact will be measured in a number of areas: the environment, urban mobility, sharing economy. Cycle.land will enable bicycles to be used much more efficiently. At the moment, commuters on average use their bikes for 44 minutes per day. By creating a community of bike sharers, these bikes can be used more efficiently: by giving access to the unused bikes to colleagues who need to cycle to a meeting across town or a tourist who wishes to cycle only for a couple of hours. Besides short-term bike sharing, there are plenty of people who have access to bicycles that they don’t use every day. These bikes that are currently standing in the sheds, can be used as transport by other riders who don’t have access to a bicycle.
Substantial accomplishments to date
In March 2016, Cycle.land secured support from Oxford University Innovation. Soon after being incubated with Oxford University Innovation, we launched in Oxford. Since launching, we have created a vibrant bike sharing community with 100% month on month growth in total users.
Cycle.land has contracts to provide shared bike mobility as a service with Oxford University Estates Services, Oxford University Graduate Accommodation Centre and Lady Margaret Hall. Cycle.land is delivering share bike mobility services to the highest satisfaction for our partners. We are currently in talks with Saïd Business School and Oxfam to establish partnerships. Since March 2016 Cycle.land has contracted services to the value of £23,800.
Monetisation strategy
There are 3 strands to Cycle.land’s monetization strategy:
1. TRANSACTION FEE: At the moment all of Cycle.land individual members enjoy freemium service provided by Cycle.land. Members pay the owners for the use of the bikes, but Cycle.land currently does not charge transaction fees. Our superusers (owners of 5+ bikes) have confirmed that they would be comfortable with being charged 15% for the use of the Cycle.land platform. We plan to start testing a 15% transaction fee in 2017 June.
2. SPONSORING: There is a huge opportunity to have sponsorship on bikes. We approached some Cycle.land members and institutional partners and they expressed interest in having corporate sponsors advertise on the bikes. We intend to start testing sponsorship on bikes in January 2017.
3. COMMUNITY BIKE SHARING: Cycle.land has contracts with University of Oxford Estates Services, Graduate Accommodation Centre and Lady Margaret Hall. Cycle.land has been delivered to a very high satisfaction to our partners with an ambition to have most of the 7million tourists visiting Oxford using the bicycles to get around the city. In negotiation with Saïd Business School and Oxfam. Since March 2016 Cycle.land has contracted services to the value of £23,800.
Use of proceeds
EXPANSION: Using support from Oxford University Innovation, Cycle.land launched in Oxford in April and has a proven record of success. We have been able to partner up with major decision-makers in Oxford to create a buzz around our mission to make bikes easily accessible to everyone in Oxford. We will use the funds raised to expand into 5 new communities: Cambridge, Bristol, Brighton, Edinburgh and East London. The funds for expansion will go into marketing, customer support and community leadership recruitment.
Market
Target market
Our members are the 20-35 demographic in urban areas in the UK. The demographic is health conscious and concerned about environmental impact of their choices. Bike sharing addresses both health and environmental concerns and provides an affordable and easily accessible alternative for transport.
Our research shows that students and young professionals are frustrated with current transport options and are keen to cycle to get around whenever bikes are easily available and affordable to them.
Tourists and visitors are another group of users who benefit from Cycle.land. Tourists using public bike sharing bikes in London, Paris and New York show that there is a huge demand for easily available and affordable bikes. Members of Cycle.land can have access to affordable bikes wherever they need and for as long as they need: a day, a week, a month or 3 months without having to bring their bikes or buy new bikes. Cycle.land makes it easy for them to keep cycling. Anyone who has friends and family visiting and wants to keep going on bikes can easily expand their bike fleet for the visit with bikes on Cycle.land. The reasons why people need bikes are countless - Cycle.land is the easy solution that connects people with the bikes they need!
Characteristics of target market
We aim for Cycle.land to be a major player in the global mobility market, valued at $5-6tn per year (excluding air travel). Shared bike mobility’s share of that market is increasing.
According to National Travel Survey, 66% of all trips in the UK are less than 5 miles. It takes about 30 minutes on a bike to go 5 miles.
PwC has calculated that on a global basis the Sharing Economy is currently worth £9bn, with this set to rise to a massive £230bn by 2025. In the UK, transport and tourism are amongst the largest categories within this sector. We estimate that in Oxford alone, there is currently approximately £25m of value tied up in idle bicycle capacity.
We believe that the market timing is perfect for Cycle.land as cities invest in cycling infrastructure, people are looking to have more active lifestyles and cut down their carbon emissions as well as save money.
Marketing strategy
Cycle.land has established the first successful market in Oxford. By focusing on one geographical area, it allowed us to have quick success in member acquisition, revenues and a variety of partnerships with influential institutions, such as University of Oxford, Oxfam and the Oxford City Council.
Already, we have developed a strategy to expand to the next 5 markets: Cambridge, Bristol, Brighton, Edinburgh and East London. These places, similar to Oxford, have a high percentage of cyclists, tourists, students, and cycling infrastructure. Additionally, we believe that, having done initial market research, by leveraging our current partnerships and by contacting local partners each of these places the Cycle.land community will be successfully launched.
Besides institutional partnerships, we recruit and retain our community members using traditional and online media. In Oxford, we successfully recruited residents using local media, students using university media, and activists using social media, events, and word-of-mouth recommendations. We aim to optimize our marketing strategy to include influencers and live events.
Competition strategy
Cycle.land connects people with all available bikes in a creative and comprehensive way. Our platform, unlike any other, provides our users easy access to all shared bikes: peer-to-peer bikes, community bikes, hire bikes from bike shops and public bike sharing. We have developed a strong focus on ambassadors and enthusiasts in the community who improve engagement, trust, and network effect.
We focus on urban cyclists, our core audience are those for whom cycling is a practical mode of transport and part of everyday life, rather than purely a sport or hobby. Given that many of the cities globally and especially in the UK are investing in cycling infrastructure, this is the segment of cycling that we believe is growing fastest.
Our innovative approach is to make every bicycle that is visible on our platform to be attractive to a diverse set of needs. On the same platform, Cycle.land members can access touring bikes, vintage bikes, and cargo bikes. This approach means that we are a fast growing bike sharing community, doubling our total bike listings, total users, total transactions and total revenues every month.
Since being incubated with Oxford University Innovation, we passed many milestones to be ready to expand into other cities in the UK. We met with Amsterdam-based bike sharing company Cycleswap which soon after was acquired by US-based Spinlister. Even though Spinlister is the oldest peer-to-peer bike sharing company, we feel that the bikes that they offer are more geared towards people who use bikes as sports equipment. While in the USA people still predominantly use bicycles as sports equipment, we do not believe this is the case in the UK and Europe. Also, we focus on building a strong community city-by-city, which gives us the advantage of brand recognition and ability to build liquidity in each city.