ION Mobility, the Singapore-based smart electric motorbike company announced Thursday it has raised $6.8 million seed financing co-led by Quest Ventures and TNB Aura.

New and returning investors participated in the round: GDP Venture, Monk’s Hill Ventures, Seeds Capital, and 500 Southeast Asia. Other investors include venture capitalist Alice Hung, ION Mobility’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer James Chan, and Chief Technology Officer Calvin Cheng.

The fundraise follows the company’s senior leadership changes earlier this year, as well as a year of intensive design, research, development, and engineering of its smart electric motorbike amidst the pandemic.

ION Mobility is preparing to unveil its smart electric motorbike later this year. With this latest round of institutional capital, the company takes the next step to set up its manufacturing operations in Singapore and Indonesia in preparation to launch in-market.

Chan said that there is a growing sense of excitement and momentum in Southeast Asia around electric motorbikes and how they can transform not just the way people move around cities, but also their impact on the environment and the economy.

“I’m personally excited about using this new investment and the support of our investors and their networks to accelerate our manufacturing facilities and go-to-market operations across Singapore and Indonesia so that we can better serve our customers upon launch,” he said.

As part of this round, Quest Ventures Managing Partner James Tan and TNB Aura Managing Partner Charles Wong will join the ION Mobility board alongside existing board members Chan and Ting Feng Toh.

“I have known James (Chan) first as a fellow venture capitalist co-investing in startups, to him now as an entrepreneur across the table. We have tracked the team and company for over a year and have been heartened by their tenacity through it all. James and his team have gone against the odds to make significant progress with limited resources in just a year, and embodies the sort of teams in bold transformative industries that we at Quest Ventures love to back,” said Tan.

There are big plans afoot. ION Mobility is in the process of commissioning its 1,175 square meter EV motorbike and battery pack assembly operations at LaunchPad@ one-north in Singapore by the end of this year and intends to expand its EV motorbike assembly operations into Jakarta come 2022.

“As an early investor in ION Mobility, we are excited to bring to market a home-grown, best-in-class alternative to petrol-based motorbikes. Through ION Mobility’s focus on their end-to-end design and advanced manufacturing along with a seamless user experience, we believe the team is uniquely positioned to take on this enormous opportunity,” said Wong.

The company remains on track to unveil its inaugural electric motorbike by the end of this year and to launch and deliver it to Indonesian customers next year.

“We are very honored to be part of the climate change solution, starting with the essential and ubiquitous motorbike,” said GDP Venture’s Chief Executive Officer Martin Hartono.

Founded in 2019, ION Mobility is a tech company on a mission to create and deliver affordable, desirable, and sustainable mobility and energy for everyone. It is committed to creating great products and seamless user experiences for its customers. Its products combine advanced hardware and software technology with human-centered design to deliver smart electric motorbikes and energy storage solutions that are for everyone to use.

Its vision is to be Southeast Asia’s top technology company leading its region’s transition towards a low-carbon economy with electric and electric mobility products for consumers across Southeast Asia.

The company is developing its inaugural EV motorbike designed for Southeast Asian motorbike riders; an expression of its mission made real; from sketch to CAD, from supply chain to production, from store to its customers – where design ideals meet practicality to demonstrate its interplay between rider versus machine, design versus functionality and performance versus intelligence, so as to deliver an unequivocally dynamic riding experience. Its electric motorbike has been designed and engineered from the ground up to deliver an unequivocally dynamic riding experience for the daily urban commute.

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