Revonte raises $2M to make e-bikes smart

2019-09-06

Revonte, a startup based in Tampere, Finland, has raised a $2M seed round following the public release of their first e-bike drive system, Revonte ONE. The innovative drive system features automatic stepless transmission, easy customizability and is fully connected for building next generation smart e-bikes. Built to answer the needs and requirements of the quickly growing e-bike industry, Revonte ONE delivers unprecedented features in a compact and carefully designed package.

Founded in 2018, Revonte set out to shake the stagnated e-bike industry with products built with high performance, customization and openness in the main focus from the very beginning.

“As the motor defines the characteristics of an e-bike to a great extend, we saw how bike brands started losing their identity to the providers of drive systems. Customers were increasingly coming to stores asking for a bike with a specific motor – regardless of the bike brand. We wanted to change that with a fully customizable system, giving control back to the e-bike manufacturers”, says Antero Jalkanen, co-founder and COO of Revonte.

Combining customizability with an integrated automatic transmission has created a lot of buzz around Revonte in the industry. Having software at the core has allowed Revonte to move extremely fast in their product design.

“Given that we started the product design of Revonte ONE in November, 2018, having a production ready design in less than a year is truly an incredible feat. It wouldn’t have been possible without our team of rock-hard industry experts”, states the company CTO and co-founder Iiro Peltola. “Innovations like the automatic transmission are of course important, but our focus is really in creating solutions that help our customers bring their e-bikes to the next level”, he continues.

With the help of the $2M investment, Revonte is taking their drive system to mass production in 2020 with a few selected customers. Production is then ramped up for e-bikes arriving in stores in 2021. But Revonte ONE is not just about the physical motor, it’s much more, thanks to the focus on software.

“Just like in electric cars, software plays a major role in future e-bikes. A fully connected drive system can provide features like integrated theft protection, automatic ride tracking and remote diagnostics. With the help of our mobile app, end users can customize their e-bike and integrate it into their digital lives. The data collected by our platform helps users to see when their bike needs service and provides manufacturers an opportunity to improve their products based on real user data. Having an integrated solution is also very valuable for companies building bike sharing or rental systems as there is no need for additional components”, says the CEO and co-founder, Otto Chrons.

To accelerate the adoption of smart e-bike systems, Revonte will be opening all their service APIs to third party developers to build and integrate great products with the Revonte system. This is practically unheard of in an industry built around black box systems and strict limitations to integration.

The seed investment round is led by Maki.vc, joined by Butterfly Ventures and a group of angel investors and brings the total investment to $2.4M. A pre-seed round was completed in January 2019 with Butterfly Ventures, founders and angel investors. The company has also received funding from Business Finland.

With the investment, Revonte is preparing for the mass production phase and intends to aggressively grow their team, keep the fast development pace intact, and to maintain their technical lead in the market.

Images and material for media can be found at https://revonte.com/mediakit

Press contact, English:
Otto Chrons, CEO, [email protected]
+358 50 359 1401

Press contact, German:
Uwe Daniel, VP of Sales, [email protected]
+49 151 44869739