Getaround Driving Growth With $140M Series E

Peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace Getaround has raised $140 million in a Series E round of funding, the company announced Wednesday.

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The new round brings the company’s total funding to almost $600 million. Getaround last raised money with a $300 million Series D led by the SoftBank Vision Fund in August 2018, according to Crunchbase.

Getaround’s revenue took a meaningful hit when COVID-19 first took hold, CEO Sam Zaid said, with bookings dropping by around 75 percent. But now, the company’s worldwide revenue has more than doubled what it was before the pandemic happened.

“The reason we then saw a very quick rebound is … we were deemed an essential service, but that’s because we are an essential mobility tool in the lives of many of our customers,” Zaid said in an interview with Crunchbase News.

To help protect themselves from COVID-19, many people have opted to avoid public transportation and ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. In fact, public transportation ridership in some cities, including San Francisco, has plummeted amid the pandemic, as has ridership for companies like Uber and Lyft.

“When you look at the options, we provide one of the safest mechanisms and modes of transportation,” Zaid said, noting that Getaround customers have been renting cars for longer periods of time amid the pandemic.

The company plans on using the new funding to focus on growing the markets it’s already in (Getaround is available in 300 cities across the U.S. and Europe) and continuing a “reasonable pace of expansion” Zaid said.

Getaround is one of a few peer-to-peer shared marketplaces for transportation. Others include Turo, which also provides a car-share service, and Riders Share, a peer-to-peer motorcycle-sharing marketplace.

PeopleFund led the Series E round with new investors Pennant Capital, Reinvent Capital, Henry McGovern, and VectoIQ partners Steve Girsky, Mary Chan and Julia Steyn joining for the round. Existing investors including Menlo Ventures, the SoftBank Vision Fund, Braemar Energy Ventures, Asset Plus Capital, Triangle Peak Partners, Bpifrance, Cathay Innovation and Via-ID also participated in the round.