ION Mobility Completes US$6.8M Seed Round Ahead of Smart Electric Motorbike Launch

Quest Ventures and TNB Aura co-lead company’s latest US$3.5 million seed equity round, adding to its earlier US$3.3 million in funding announced in Q4-2020 as it prepares to go-to-market.

ION Mobility, a smart electric motorbike company which designs and makes products that deliver seamless user experiences for sustainable mobility, announced the conclusion of its US$6.8 million Seed financing today. Quest Ventures and TNB Aura co-led the round, joined by new and returning investors such as GDP Venture, Monk’s Hill Ventures, Seeds Capital and 500 Southeast Asia. Other investors include Alice Hung, CEO James Chan, and CTO Calvin Cheng.

The financing follows the company’s senior leadership changes earlier this year, as well as a year of intensive design, research, development and engineering of its smart electric motorbike amidst the pandemic. ION Mobility is preparing to unveil its smart electric motorbike later this year. With this latest round of institutional capital, ION Mobility takes the next step to set up its manufacturing operations in Singapore and Indonesia in preparation to launch in-market.

“There is a growing sense of excitement and momentum in Southeast Asia around electric motorbikes and how they can transform not just the way people move around cities, but also their impact on the environment and the economy, “ founder and CEO James Chan said, “I’m personally excited about using this new investment and the support of our investors and their networks to accelerate our manufacturing facilities and go-to-market operations across Singapore and Indonesia, so that we can better serve our customers upon launch.”

As part of this round, Quest Ventures Managing Partner James Tan and TNB Aura Managing Partner Charles Wong will join the ION Mobility board alongside existing board members James Chan and Ting Feng Toh.

James Tan said, “I have known James (Chan) first as a fellow venture capitalist co-investing in startups, to him now as an entrepreneur across the table. We have tracked the team and company for over a year and have been heartened by their tenacity through it all. James and his team have gone against the odds to make significant progress with limited resources in just a year, and embodies the sort of teams in bold transformative industries that we at Quest Ventures love to back.”

There are big plans afoot. ION Mobility is in the process of commissioning its 1,175 square metre EV motorbike and battery pack assembly operations at LaunchPad@ one-north in Singapore by the end of this year, and intends to expand its EV motorbike assembly operations into Jakarta come 2022.

“As an early investor in ION Mobility, we are excited to bring to market a home-grown, best-in-class alternative to petrol-based motorbikes. Through ION Mobility’s focus on their end-to-end design and advanced manufacturing along with a seamless user experience, we believe the team is uniquely positioned to take on this enormous opportunity," said Charles Wong, co-founder & Managing Partner of TNB Aura.

The company remains on track to unveil its inaugural electric motorbike by the end of this year, and to launch and deliver it to Indonesian customers next year.

Martin Hartono, CEO at GDP Venture said, "We are very honoured to be part of the climate change solution, starting with the essential and ubiquitous motorbike."

About ION Mobility

Founded in 2019, ION Mobility is a tech company on a mission to create and deliver affordable, desirable, and sustainable mobility and energy for everyone. We are committed to creating great products and seamless user experiences for our customers. Our products combine advanced hardware and software technology with human-centred design to deliver smart electric motorbikes and energy storage solutions that are for everyone to use.

Our vision is to be Southeast Asia’s top technology company leading our region’s transition towards a low-carbon economy with electric and electric mobility products for consumers across Southeast Asia.

We are developing our inaugural EV motorbike designed for Southeast Asian motorbike riders; an expression of our mission made real; from sketch to CAD, from supply chain to production, from store to our customers - where design ideals meet practicality to demonstrate our interplay between rider versus machine, design versus functionality and performance versus intelligence, so as to deliver an unequivocally dynamic riding experience. Our electric motorbike has been designed and engineered from the ground-up to deliver an unequivocally dynamic riding experience for the daily urban commute.