Dat Bike, a Vietnamese electric motorbike startup, announced Thursday a $5.3 million Series A fundraise led by Jungle Ventures with participation from existing investor Wavemaker Partners, bringing the total fundraise by the company since inception to $10 million.
Dat Bike said in a statement that it intends to use the new round of funding to invest in technology, scale production, expand to metro and Tier one cities across North, Central and South Vietnam, and hire top talent.
“Dat Bike is proud to be at the forefront of reimaging transportation in Southeast Asia. We are incredibly proud of the progress we have made so far, and we continue to strive to make electric vehicle performance at par and better than gasoline,
“Today Dat Bike represents high-performance, electric motorbikes that are designed and crafted at affordable prices for the changing Vietnam. We are proud to continue to partner with Jungle Ventures as we scale into other geographies in Vietnam,” said Son Nguyen, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Dat Bike.
Founded in 2019, Son revealed his environmentally friendly concept to the world on Shark Tank Vietnam in what became the country’s top viewed episode. Since then, Dat Bike has been built with a vision to drive the mass adoption of green transportation in Southeast Asia and convert the 250M gasoline motorbikes to electric.
Despite Southeast Asia being one of the largest motorbike markets in the world, the adoption of electric vehicles has been slow since traditionally they are seen as an inferior option to gasoline bikes being weak and low-ranged, delivering only half the performance of a typical gas bike. This is the gap that Dat Bike is addressing.
Dat Bike’s competitive advantage has been its performance against gasoline bikes which results from their deep vertical integration since designs and builds key components in house including the speed controller and battery.
Since the launch of Weaver 200 (November 2021), the company has been overwhelmed with the customer response, with revenue increasing 10 times, despite a waiting time of up to four months.
The company has also opened a new store in Hanoi in April 2022 and will open one more in Danang soon, to meet the growing demand.
“The $25 billion two-wheeler industry in Southeast Asia in particular is at the cusp of electrification. Son’s determination to electrify Southeast Asia two-wheeler market is in great part driven by an acute awareness of the looming environmental threat and delivered by the unmatched performance of Dat Bike. We are extremely proud to partner with Dat Bike as the lead the change in the region and create the benchmark globally for high-performance electric bikes,” said My Tran, Vice President at Jungle Ventures.
According to the statement, this investment is testament to Jungle Ventures’ commitment to Vietnam, following its recent investments in KiotViet, Vietnam’s leading merchant platform for MSMEs; Mio, Vietnam’s leading social commerce platform for grocery and fresh produce; and Medici, Vietnam’s leading healthcare and insurtech platform; Timo, the first and leading digital bank in Vietnam, and several more to be announced in coming months.