ALTAVENTURE advises KAROS, leader in short-carpooling for its fund raising operation of 4.2 million euros

KAROS accelerate its development with the support of Aster, Alto Invest, Aglaé Ventures, Financière Saint James and renowned business angels like Xavier Niel, Franck Le Ouay and Charles Egly.

Paris, April 12, 2018 – KAROS, a pioneer in short-distance carpooling, today announces a €4.2 million fundraising operation from its historical investors and a pool of private investors, including :

• Aster, a venture capital firm specializing in the fields of mobility, energy and industry;
• Alto Invest, a management company specializing in the financing of innovative European SMEs, a subsidiary of Eiffel Investment Group;
• Aglaé Ventures, early stage investment program of Groupe Arnault, Bernard Arnault’s family holding company;
• Saint James Financial, Family Office of Michael Benabou (co-founder of vente-privée.com);
• Renowned business angels, including Xavier Niel, Franck Le Ouay (co-founder of Criteo) and Charles Egly (co-founder of Younited Credit).

This is a record investment in the commuters’ carpooling sector.

Artificial intelligence at the service of a more efficient and ecological daily mobility

KAROS develops intelligent networks of daily mobility by exploiting Artificial Intelligence technologies to optimize daily door-to-door journeys by combining dynamic carpooling and public transport. The company is developing the reservation platform and the community of use of the future shared autonomous vehicle, connected to public transport.

This major fundraising is intended to accelerate the growth of the user community and accelerate its monetization. After having successfully validated its service with users (very high satisfaction, high retention rates, repeated use, saving passengers’ travel time, financial gain for drivers), KAROS now intends to accelerate the development of its community of users and its development in terms of sales and marketing with two priority targets: local authorities with its dedicated offer KAROS TERRITOIRES, and major accounts with its dedicated offer KAROS ENTREPRISES. It will also be a matter of continuing the ongoing process of scientific and technological innovations in order to always offer the best service to users and to raise its barriers to entry.

Leader of the sector

The KAROS application is currently the most used in France for short-distance carpooling and has grown exponentially by 8% per week for more than 18 months. With more than 110,000 users, drivers and passengers, KAROS’ mobility offering makes it possible to efficiently supplement public transport networks in low-density areas. KAROS saves its users an average of €82 per month on their car budget and saves them an average of 24 minutes each way. KAROS thus responds to a major problem for communities, who wish to offer economically sustainable mobility services to all citizens in their territory. KAROS is also a leader in carpooling for business mobility plans. Its KAROS ENTREPRISES solution has already been deployed to 400 client sites, employing more than 60,000 employees.

Altaventure Partners, an independent investment banking firm specialized in High-Tech and disrupting sectors, offering strategic and financial services on M&A, fund raising operations, advised Karos for this private placement.

Olivier Binet and Tristan Croiset, co-founders of KAROS, declared: “Our technological and scientific approach, which allowed us to bring out this new practice of daily mobility that we called the short-carpooling®, proved its relevance to our users and our customers. The support of leading investors today strengthens our strategy and opens up many development opportunities to grow a very large community of users and support our corporate and community customers.”

Franck Halley, managing director of Alto Invest, said: “The innovative technologies developed by Karos enable the service to stand out significantly from the competing offers by proposing an optimization of the short-carpooling and to develop a more shared and more sustainable mobility. We were seduced by this approach perfectly aligned with the values of our investment funds.”

“Carpooling is an alternative solution that constitutes a formidable vector of attractiveness for public transport. Market leader, Karos densifies virtual networks and federates a community in full expansion. Aster is happy to accompany Olivier and his team in their next phase of growth.” Said Pierre Cordelle, Senior Associate, Aster

Eric Pilat, Partner & Founder of AltaVenture Partners said: “Karos is one of the very few European startups that have mastered artificial intelligence technologies in the mobility sector, including daily carpooling. AltaVenture Partners is very proud to have worked in recent months alongside Olivier Binet and Tristan Croiset to take this essential step in the life of a startup with this Series A financing. Karos now has the means to deploy its Saas platform of AI to local authorities and companies on a very large scale and to become a major player in the mobility of tomorrow.”

For more information, please visit our Web site and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn:

www.KAROS.fr

Twitter: http://twitter.com/KAROS_fr

Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/KAROS.fr

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/karos/

Founded in 2003, AltaVenture is an investment and advisory firm specialized in high-tech, Digital, FinTech, InsurTech, Defense and yachting industries. AltaVenture provides to investors, founders and entrepreneurs strategic and financial advisory services on operations such as M&A, fund raising and ICO. AltaVenture has two offices in Paris and Melbourne and strategic partnership with key players in Switzerland and China.

For more information, please visit our Web site and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn:

www.altaventure.com

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For enquiries please contact:

Eric Pilat: Partner
Tel: +33 (0) 1 45 51 67 13
Email: eric.pilat@altaventure.com