MTS is considering the possibility of entering the micromobile transport market and, in particular, is negotiating investments in the Lite scooter rental service, Vedomosti learned. This is just one of the companies in the segment that MTS is looking at, says a source close to it. According to him, the operator is studying the potential of the rental market for such vehicles and options for entering it. Negotiations on attracting investments were initiated by Lite itself, until specific agreements have been reached, emphasizes another source in MTS. The representative of MTS declined to comment, Lite did not answer Vedomosti’s questions.
Market participants interviewed by Vedomosti associate Lite with the founder of YouDrive car sharing service Boris Golikov (he himself declined to comment). KIK LLC operates under the Lite brand, according to the website of the rental company. Several companies with this name are registered in SPARK-Interfax. According to the service of TIme Company, established in Moscow in 2018.
LLC “KIK” registered the trade mark YOU DRIVE LITE. According to SPARK-Interfax, the CFC is co-owned by several Russian individuals and legal entities, the largest shares in the authorized capital (25% each) belong to Maria Kozhevnikova and Sergey Safonov. In 2020, the company’s revenue amounted to a little more than 13.2 million rubles, compared to 2019 it grew by more than 32 times. “Against the background of such projects as Whoosh and Urent, the Lite service is quite small, today, according to the operator, there are about 2,700 scooters in the park, and the geography of its presence is limited to Moscow and Sochi. The Lite market share by the number of rental scooters in Russia is now in the region of 3%, ”says Yuri Nikolaev, publisher of the truesharing.ru project.
At the same time, Nikolaev considers the electric scooter rental market extremely promising: “At the beginning of 2020, there were no more than 10,000 scooters in Russia, and by the end of the year there were already about 30,000. As of mid-spring 2021, all operators accounted for about 85 000 scooters. Taking into account the plans for the growth of all operators this year, their total number may exceed 100,000, of which 30,000-50,000 are in Moscow. ” According to Nikolaev’s calculations, in 2021 the market for electric scooter rental may reach RUB 10 billion. against about 3 billion rubles. Last year. “Urent and Whoosh account for 60,000–65,000 scooters, the rest of the players are inferior to them in the number of devices and geography of presence,” he clarifies.
$ 200 – 300 billion
by 2030, the volume of the micromobile transport market in the United States, according to the forecast of McKinsey. In Europe, this figure will reach $ 100-150 billion, in China – $ 30-50 billion
The rapid growth rates of the market, according to Nikolayev, provided investments of AFK Sistema, which recently acquired a stake in the Urent rental service, as well as investments of VTB and Otkritie Bank in the Whoosh project, which amounted to almost 2 billion rubles. The fact that the Sistema SmartTech fund invested 200 million rubles in Urent became known in early April; the investments of VTB and Otkritie funds in Whoosh were announced in February. “Thanks to these investments, the companies received funds to increase the park and regional expansion,” Nikolayev continues. “The number of leased scooters is growing literally every week.” Based on the experience of previous transactions, it can be assumed that the Lite valuation could be up to 500 million rubles, he believes: “But it depends not only on the current fleet of scooters – it is important what development strategy the company will offer to investors, what are its plans for geographic expansion, expansion business, customer acquisition, etc. ”.
When building business processes related to the rental of electric vehicles, operators will face problems that are not typical for the cellular business and, in principle, are not taken into account in the practices of mobile operators, says the CEO of Telecom Daily Denis Kuskov: “In Russia, the business of renting scooters and bicycles is seasonal. … This means that, unlike, say, the United States, scooters will not be in demand from late autumn to early spring, that is, about six months, the only exception can be made in the south of the country. ” And the poor quality of the road surface in Russian cities can entail significant operating costs, said Kuskov, to which, according to him, should also be added “vandalism and theft of vehicles.”
The possible entry of MTS into the micromobile transport market now looks more like an experiment, it is difficult to perceive it as a serious and profitable addition to the operator’s ecosystem, says Renaissance Capital analyst Alexander Vengranovich: “The business associated with the rental of electric scooters and other vehicles will work only in combination with its own cartographic service, which MTS does not have. Otherwise, you will have to use someone else’s, which leads to increased costs. ” According to Vengranovich, electric scooter rental should complement a multimodal service that allows you to plan an optimal route using public transport, car sharing, and taxi. According to Kuskov, the efficiency of the rental business can be enhanced by special agreements between its operators and participants in the logistics and delivery market: “Demand for electric scooters from couriers is high and is growing in the spring and summer season”.
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