The European continent needs urgent climate action to achieve carbon neutrality. Specifically, adopting electric vehicles (EV) for commercial fleets is critical in reaching the Sustainable and Smart Mobility plan’s goal of reducing 90% of transport-related emissions by 2050.
However, the fleet industry suffers from a fragmented market and opacity of supply. The limited visibility of a fleet’s current status, resulting in a lack of accountability and enormous inefficiencies, is compounded by geographical barriers, with fleets having to find regional and local solutions in each market they operate.
This is why we are excited to back Papaya, a UK-based company set to disrupt the status quo of commercial fleets management and power the ecosystem needed to speed up decarbonisation. Since soft launching in February, Papaya has on-boarded more than 1,000 EVs, working with industry leaders like GoPuff, Evri, and Hived. The platform lives in multiple countries, including the UK, Spain, France, and Germany, and plans to expand across every major European city by the end of the year.
Founded by CEO Santi Ureta and CTO Renato Serra, both formerly of Deliveroo, Papaya’s mission is to build Europe’s largest electric vehicle ecosystem and decarbonise European fleets. Launched initially as a vehicle management system to enable fleets to increase utilisation and uptime, and manage all suppliers with one easy-to-use software tool, it has since evolved into a multi-sided platform. Vehicles are connected to both fleets and an array of service providers – from vehicle suppliers to equipment firms, insurance providers, and charging stations – who gain access to a rapidly growing marketplace of new customers and the tools needed to service them.
Papaya co-founder Santi Ureta highlights:
“Papaya is on a mission to electrify Europe’s fleets. We are committed to empowering the electrification ecosystem by removing any barriers and connecting service providers and fleets in one single system, where anyone can plug in; creating market efficiencies instead of just company efficiencies.”
On our investment, Managing Partner Carlos Espinal comments:
“We are excited about Papaya’s holistic approach to sourcing, running, and managing commercial EV fleets. Santi and Renato’s experience in logistics and last-mile delivery and their ambitious vision give them a unique edge to execute their mission to electrify vehicle fleets worldwide, starting with Europe.“
Papaya has raised a $3.5M seed round led by Giant Ventures, with our participation alongside 20VC, FJ Labs, Flexport, and Cocoa. Leading angel investors backing Papaya’s mission include: Sir Richard Branson’s family; Former CTPO of Deliveroo and Monzo, Mike Hudack; former Techcrunch journalist Steve O’Hear; founder of Exponential View, Azeem Azhar; co-founder of Glovo, Oscar Pierre; and co-founder of Onfleet, Khaled Naim.
For more information, visit papayadash.com