Bird in Plans to Acquire Scoot – an eScooter Sharing Service

Just as we thought that the eScooter market was crowded enough and there was now a minimal scope of new entry, the industry has given us a fresh round of speculation surrounding a recent acquisition deal.  

While not announced out in the open yet, TechCrunch through its reliable sources has revealed that Bird has acquired the San-Francisco based eScooter sharing service Scoot, but is yet to announce it openly.

Now although the exact terms of the agreement are not known, the speculated deal has left Bird on the profit side for Scoot is valued at approximately $71 million and raised around $47 millions in equity funds from names like Vision Ridge Partners, Scout Ventures, and Joanne Wilson – an angel investor.

Bird, on the other hand, has found itself benefitting from the many funding rounds happening time and again, with the recent one being a  $300 Million Funding round. And before that, just in the last year itself, the eScooter pioneer raised fund in two rounds –

• $15 Million in February, 2018
• $200 Million in March, 2018

The acquisition which is Bird’s first ever since its inception is seen as a move to cover the cities that fall under Scoot’s domain, even though they are only three – something that is seemingly a weird deal, for the geographical coverage that Bird will get from this deal is not very significant.

The only profit intent that can be lined along this speculated partnership is in the collaboration that has been given birth to.

The merger of two companies who have a very different geographical footprint is likely to result in a much faster and cheaper mode of creating a big business instantly.

On the vehicle side of it, both the companies are offering almost similar vehicles’ types. While Scoot’s network is built on seated scooters, electric push scooters, and electric bikes, Bird too has introduced its electric seated scooter after being restricted to electric push scooters for a long time.

This acquisition is bound to help both the brands achieve high-level economies of scale on at the back of device R&D and vehicles’ purchasing power. It will also help them in competing with the other two strong players – Uber and Lyft – operating in the same geographical market.

Now, while we are yet to see how the agreements of the acquisition are going to unfold, what can be gauged from how the events are shaping up is that the eScooter economy is soon going to hit a growth tangent that is going to bring a rise in the demand for eScooter app development companies to support this rise.