A business can rise from its ashes like the phoenix.
After the catastrophic start of Velib 2 in 2018, Smoove, which supplies the bicycles and the computer system for the Parisian shared bicycle network, seemed to be inexorably burning.
His image was pitiful and his accounts in the red.
To get out of the rut, it reshuffled its shareholder structure in mid-2019.
Exit its founder Laurent Mercat: already in the round, Mobivia (Norauto, Midas…) bought back its shares and paid off its losses.
And the start-up is off to a good start.
It has extended its fleet of self-service bicycles to Moscow and Helsinki.
And, in France, it provided 50 shared electric bikes in Carcassonne.
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Today, Smoove is taking the next step: the start-up is merging with Zoov.
Or rather it buys this French operator of electric bicycles created in particular by Eric Carreel, the founder of the manufacturer of connected objects Withing.
An operation made by exchange of shares where Mobivia will remain the majority and the company will always be called Smoove.
In the case, the supplier of Velib 'will recover the technologies of Zoov which make it possible to practice predictive maintenance of the bicycles.
These bicycles have proven their worth in Grenoble and Paris where they are operated by Pony.
The new group achieves nearly 40 million euros in turnover and supplies more than 50,000 electric or mechanical bikes shared in 23 cities.
He now intends to raise several tens of millions of euros to go further.
We will see if investors also believe in the beautiful story of the phoenix.