November 8, 2023 – CLIP, a Brooklyn-based clean mobility startup, closed its $2.8M seed round and announced a strategic manufacturing partnership with Motovolt Mobility Pvt. Ltd, a global EV manufacturer from India. The partnership will allow CLIP to more rapidly scale its operations.
CLIP is a TIME Best Inventions of 2020 Winner with a mission to create the most user-friendly technology for upgrading all existing regular bicycles in the world to e-bikes, ultimately empowering individuals to transition their urban commutes to cycling. By building an affordable and easy path for millions across the world to transition to bike commuting, CLIP has the potential to empower urban commuters to eliminate up to 5% of total CO2 emissions from the world.
The flagship product, starting at $499, offers a convenient and affordable alternative to e-bikes for urban commuters in North America and Europe.
CLIP is also working on a new moonshot product - a $100 device called BOLT (inspired by the OLPC program from MIT), designed for consumers in emerging economies. CLIP will be working closely with Motovolt on the BOLT program with pilots scheduled in India in mid 2024. India stands as one of the largest and rapidly expanding two-wheeler markets on a global scale. It has set an ambitious target of achieving a 30% electric vehicle market share by 2030, providing a significant backdrop for this strategic partnership.
The strategic partnership with Motovolt Mobility, founded by Tushar Choudhary in 2018, aims to provide affordable mobility to emerging economies across the world. With plans to further invest around €40 million in the coming years, Motovolt is committed to driving progress and innovation in the e-mobility sector.
"India sells around 15 million standard bicycles every year with around 200 million on the road at a given moment. We are committed to making a huge positive impact by bringing all these bicycles into the future with CLIP," said Tushar Choudhary, Founder and CEO of Motovolt Mobility.
CLIP was born out of Newlab, a deep tech innovation platform founded to break down the critical barriers to allow climate startups to succeed. Newlab played a critical role in CLIP's funding journey, providing a space for testing and connecting the company with a network of investors and advisors.
"Newlab has been the creative ground for all of CLIP's activities: from building the first alpha prototype, to collaborating with a Newlab member company to build the MVP, to scaling our production and distribution," said Som Ray, Co-Founder of CLIP. "Being part of an ecosystem of amazing founders and operators who are constantly building and growing is infectious and keeps us going."
CLIP'S impact mission is backed by a distinguished advisory network of notable members in academia and venture funding like Professor Tarun Khanna from Harvard Business School, Dr. Soumitra Dutta, Dean of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, and Sandiip Bhammer, founder of Green Frontier Capital, India's largest climate focused fund.
On the manufacturing and distribution side, CLIP is supported by industry heavyweights like Raaja Kanwar, Chairman & Managing Director of Apollo International, and Sunjay Kapur, Chairman at Sona Comstar who bring their seasoned insights as part of the advisory board.
Learn more at www.clip.bike
ABOUT CLIP
Founded in 2018 by Som Ray and Clem De Alcala, CLIP's mission is to build the most affordable electric mobility platform in the world by creating the most user-friendly technology for upgrading all existing regular bicycles in the world to e-bikes, empowering individuals worldwide to transition their urban commutes to cycling.
ABOUT NEWLAB
Newlab creates the conditions for world-changing ideas to become real-world solutions. Through its community of startups, applied innovation programming, physical infrastructure, and direct investment, Newlab helps commercialize and scale the critical technologies needed to decarbonize the economy. Today, Newlab includes more than 1000 entrepreneurs, partnerships with forward-thinking corporate and civic entities, and a network of active investors—all working together to scale hard tech. To date, Newlab has supported its 300+ member companies in raising over $2B in capital from 260 venture capital firms, with over $1.8B of successful exits and a collective valuation of over $5B. Visit www.newlab.com to learn more.
