Led · Equity · Oct 2025

Plstka is an Egyptian start-up that runs a recycling platform enhanced by artificial intelligence, allowing individuals to exchange sorted waste for rewards. The company is currently active in four cities within Egypt’s Delta region and serves a community of 50,000 users. Through its service, Plstka has already diverted and recycled 1,500 tonnes of landfill waste. The platform’s AI capabilities help optimize collection routes and improve waste-sorting efficiency. With fresh capital, management plans to deepen operational capacity and expand the service to six additional cities. While revenue figures were not disclosed, the company’s user base and recycling volume underscore early traction. The team aims to leverage its technology and geographic expansion to accelerate growth and increase waste-recovery rates across Egypt.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2019

Superpedestrian develops electric micromobility vehicles and an advanced software platform centered on its LINK e-scooter and Vehicle Intelligence system. The company recently announced Pedestrian Defense, an AI-based safety system that fuses multiple vehicle sensors to detect unsafe riding behaviors and can automatically slow or stop a scooter in real time. Superpedestrian’s LINK fleet has launched in 57 cities and has logged tens of millions of miles, and the company holds over 40 patents in vehicle safety, automated maintenance, fleet optimization, and context awareness. Following field tests, the firm plans to deploy Pedestrian Defense in the first 25 cities across the U.S. and Europe during 2022, while expanding the LINK shared e-scooter service and boosting R&D. The new funding will be used to scale deployments in micromobility and support advanced R&D programs. Superpedestrian was spun out of MIT in 2013 and positions itself as a world-leader in transportation robotics and human-scale mobility. Superpedestrian develops the LINK e-scooter, which incorporates On-Board Intelligence and an active safety system. The company intends to use the new funds to accelerate expansion of its LINK scooter fleet. Spun out of MIT and led by founder and CEO Assaf Biderman, Superpedestrian invested eight years and $75M to patent more than 30 electric vehicle technologies. The LINK scooter performs autonomous maintenance and safety verification before every ride, with each vehicle containing five computers that act as an "A.I. Mechanic," monitoring components thousands of times per second and self-repairing electronic systems. From the outside LINK appears like a typical scooter but is more rugged and designed to protect riders and the vehicle in real time. LINK has thousands of vehicles on the road across 12 cities from Seattle to Rome, and the company is vying for permits in New York City and other major global cities. Superpedestrian, founded in 2012 by CEO Assaf Biderman, is a mobility engineering and technology company known for designing micromobility vehicles including the Copenhagen Wheel. It develops intelligent e-scooters featuring a proprietary Vehicle Intelligence System (VIS) that monitors the entire vehicle in real time and runs a self-diagnostic check before each ride. Superpedestrian’s scooters are engineered to last more than 2,500 rides, can travel up to 55 miles on a single charge, and the company says resilient vehicles keep per-ride operating costs around 50% lower than other operators. The company acquired Zagster’s micromobility fleet operations business and launched LINK, a shared micromobility platform that lets riders rent e-scooters via smartphone. LINK emphasizes collaboration with cities, fast onboard geofence enforcement, rider safety, and fleet management designed to meet city needs. Superpedestrian makes electric scooters equipped with a vehicle-intelligence platform that detects more than 100 situations that could lead to malfunction, triages issues, and determines responses to prevent vehicle damage and rider injury. Its software continuously monitors for problems such as water penetration, cut internal wires, battery cell temperature imbalances, and braking issues, and can enforce local speed limits via geofencing. The scooters can last up to seven days without recharging, assuming about five to six rides per day. Superpedestrian is currently focused on selling its platform and vehicles to operators, though it plans to eventually sell directly to consumers. The company is on track to launch in multiple markets in January, with operating partners yet to be announced. Financially, the startup has raised a total of $64 million to date. Superpedestrian began as the maker of the Copenhagen Wheel, a circular unit that adds motorized assist, battery and sensors to bicycles. The company is shifting to a B2B business selling hardware and software diagnostics to e-bike, scooter and moped fleet operators, leveraging roughly one million kilometers of aggregated data from Copenhagen customers. Its stack includes sensors, embedded controllers, and software protected by dozens of patents across multiple jurisdictions. Superpedestrian says its technology improves rider control and synchronization of power to pedaling, and can monitor battery health to reduce overheating risk. The company is micro-vehicle agnostic and plans to introduce these products and services into the rapidly growing shared scooter and e-bike market. It employs roughly 50 people and has drawn investor support for the new direction.

Participated · Series B · Aug 2016

Zoomcar operates a car‑sharing platform focused on emerging markets. The company announced a definitive merger agreement with Innovative International Acquisition, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, that will take Zoomcar public. Upon closing the business combination, the combined company is expected to be renamed Zoomcar Holdings, Inc. and to list its common stock on Nasdaq. The transaction carries an implied pro forma enterprise value of approximately $456 million. Concurrent with execution of the merger agreement, an affiliate of Innovative’s sponsor invested $10 million in Zoomcar via a convertible promissory note. The note’s repayment obligation is structured to be offset against the sponsor affiliate’s $10 million subscription for 1,000,000 newly issued shares of Innovative at $10.00 per share upon consummation of the business combination; if the business combination is not consummated, the note will be exchanged for a Zoomcar convertible promissory note and the subscription agreement will terminate. Zoomcar operates a car-sharing marketplace that allows users to rent cars by the month, week, day or hour. The Sequoia Capital India-backed firm is active across several nations, with India as its largest market and presence in Southeast Asia and the MENA region. It works with individuals, SMEs that operate fleets and semi-professionals, and maintains partnerships with banks and insurance firms. The company employs more than 300 people and has over 10,000 cars on its platform. Zoomcar expects its platform to focus heavily on electric vehicles in the medium term. It plans to expand into more than 20 countries over the next 18 months and is exploring a public listing, aiming to file for an IPO next year. Financially, the company has raised $92 million in the latest round and $207 million in total to date. Zoomcar, founded in 2012 by Greg Moran and David Back, operates a self-drive car rental and shared subscription service using a hyperlocal pickup model. The firm currently provides services in cities including Mumbai, Jaipur, Kolkata, Chennai, Guwahati, and Ludhiana. It has said it will enhance its technological and data-science infrastructure, upgrade its Internet of Things systems and its shared subscription offering, and expand to more parts of the country. Financially, the company recently received Rs 41 crore (about $5.5M) from parent Zoomcar Inc via an allocation of 82,566 shares at Rs 4,967 apiece. Previous financings include a $30M round in January 2020 led by Sony Innovation Fund and a $40M round in February 2018 led by Mahindra & Mahindra. Zoomcar positions itself as part of a new generation of transportation services promoting shared mobility. Zoomcar India Pvt. Ltd is described in filings as a self-drive car rental start-up. The company operates a platform that rents cars to customers for self-driving. Recent filings with the Registrar of Companies show Zoomcar raised $3.6 million (Rs 25 crore) in debt funding. That debt financing was provided by Trifecta Capital, according to a YourStory report quoting the RoC filings. The articles do not disclose operating metrics, detailed terms of the financing, or stated future plans. Zoomcar operates a Zipcar-style on-demand car rental service alongside programs to grow inventory, including ZAP (a leasing scheme for new car buyers) and a multi-month subscription product. The company also runs Pedl, a bike-sharing service that the firm intends to scale into many more cities. As of the article it operates in 29 cities with about 2.7 million registered users, roughly 3,500 cars and customers have completed over 1.1 million trips; Pedl was running in ten cities with ~500,000 transactions per month. Zoomcar has begun piloting electric vehicles with Mahindra; the fleet had about 50 EVs at the time, targeting 500 in the coming months and a goal of 50% EVs by 2020. Financially, Zoomcar reported revenue of Rs 121.2 crore (~$19M) for the year ending March 2017, a loss of Rs 100.4 crore (~$15.6M) for that year, and said it had turned EBITDA positive at the end of 2017 while remaining unprofitable overall. Management projects that reaching 15,000 cars could translate to north of $100M in annualized revenue.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2013

Basno operates a digital badges platform that lets people create, collect and display badges recognizing real accomplishments, skills and expertise. The company is shifting away from gamified check-in style badges toward achievement-based awards (e.g., running a marathon) and attaches rewards such as prize-draws, VIP access and loyalty discounts to encourage display. Examples of attached offers include entry to win a $250 Foot Locker gift card and partners seeding the ecosystem with rewards like Virgin America bonus miles. Basno supports badge syndication to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and embedding in blogs and email signatures, and serves the majority of its traffic via mobile browsers. Its business model is freemium, with badge issuers paying for premium distribution, analytics and design tools. The company plans to use new funding to grow the team, create deeper badge-owner experiences, develop self-serve tools for issuers and onboard high-quality brands, with an initial head start in the athletics vertical.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2013

Human Demand launched as a platform to help indie app developers optimize ad campaigns with transparent metrics and a color-coded “power level” toolkit that shows acquisition price and where ads will run. Since launching last August the company has expanded its focus to serve brands and agencies, and today reports an even mix of brands and indie developers using the platform. To date it has handled around 400 campaigns from roughly 150 customers and its reach is pegged at about 11,000–12,000 publishers. The business partners with multiple exchanges including MoPub, MobClix, Smaato, Nexage, OpenX, Inneractive, LiveIntent and Amobee, and recently integrated with TRUSTe to support consumer opt-outs for interest-based advertising. Human Demand emphasizes privacy and brand safety, offering tools for hyper-local, audience and true brand safety targeting. The company recently hired a VP of Sales to scale agency and brand efforts and plans a set of product announcements in Q2, notably adding support for mobile video in its self-serve platform.