Dat Bike, a Vietnamese electric motorbike startup, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding from a group of investors led by Singapore venture capital firm Jungle Ventures.
U.S. venture capital firms Wavemaker Partners, Hustle Fund and iSeed Ventures are the others.
The startup plans to establish a supply chain in Southeast Asia in the next two to three years.
Amit Anand, founding partner of Jungle Ventures, said: "We believe that Dat Bike will lead the mobility sector and create a new benchmark not just in the region but potentially globally for what the next generation of two-wheeler electric vehicles will look and perform like."
It is Jungle Ventures’ first investment in the mobility sector, he said, explaining his firm decided to invest since it was impressed that the startup, with an initial funding of less than $1 million, had managed to produce its own electric motorbikes within two years.
Talking to VnExpress, Dat Bike founder Nguyen Ba Canh Son said the money would help expand production capacity and fund R&D.
Son founded Dat Bike in December 2018 after quitting his job in the U.S.’s Silicon Valley.
Its flagship and first electric motorbike, Weaver, is powered with a 5,000W motor and has a top speed of 80 kilometers per hour. Its battery can be fully charged within three hours.
It costs VND39.9 million ($1,734).
Its plant in the southern province of Binh Duong has a capacity of 1,000 motorbikes a month.
It opened its first store in HCMC last December, and Son said sales have been growing at 35 percent a month since then.
Dat Bike sources all its components domestically. Son said the benefits of this, instead of sourcing from China and other countries, include streamlined logistics and a more efficient supply chain.
