MobilityFund is pleased to announce its latest investment: Colonia.
We're participating in the startup's €6M seed round, alongside Octopus Ventures, Plug and Play, and other investors.
Logistics forms the core of the European economy, with an estimated 4.6 million trucks and trailers transporting 76% of all goods. However, inconsistent access to these vehicles presents a bottleneck, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) grappling with fluctuating orders and driver shortages. Colonia Technologies is solving this problem through its unique B2B sharing model, enabling logistics companies to share vehicles via a secure marketplace equipped with user-friendly fleet management software to operate fleets more effectively.
Co-founder Kaspar Filipp explains, “Logistics companies often lose business due to the lack of access to appropriate vehicles, while simultaneously struggling to effectively utilize their own fleets. We see that demand in the commercial vehicle sharing segment has already increased significantly in the first half of the year and expect the trend to continue.”
Colonia aims to become the Airbnb of the truck market. While the company's own vehicle fleet traditionally limits the scope of contracts, Colonia allows the use of vehicles to be separated from ownership. Missing vehicles can be rented temporarily and excess vehicles can be rented out via the platform and generate revenue instead of costs in the parking lot. Although vehicle utilization is already very important today, it will become even more so in the future because electrification and autonomous driving functions will make vehicles even more expensive compared to the other cost items.
The founders of Colonia already gained extensive experience in the transport industry before the company was founded in 2021, from which they are now benefiting. Jakob Sadoun and Kaspar Filipp have spent most of their careers driving the transformation of the transportation and logistics industry, Jakob Sadoun in strategy consulting, and Kaspar Filipp in consulting and policy. Colonia currently employs 16 people.