About the Startup:

r3charge simplifies and optimizes long distance EV travel by providing reliable charging options at each step of the journey. Starting with destination-charging, r3charge already provides direct booking to more than 110.000 hotels with charging in 42 countries. Soon, we will add route planning and payment for public charging to become the first all-in-one EV travel app.

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Business Stage:

MVP live, revenue coming in from 20 countries, only founding team working on it (2/3 full-time but unpaid).

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Management Team:

Guillaume - CEO - with more than 10 years of experience in mobility business models from working at Daimler and from first founding experience

Jonatan - our CTO - a full-stack developer and experienced team lead for large B2C e-commerce platforms

Ole - our CMO - who has his background in online marketing and corporate venture building

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Problem and Opportunity:

Charging is still the main concern for electric vehicle drivers each time they travel long distances. There are not enough chargers, they are not reliable and prices are unpredictable.  

Which means that for each trip, EV drivers need  to combine information from 4 to 5 different apps to plan their route, find where to charge on the way and at the destination.

At r3charge we are bringing convenience to the life of EV drivers by bringing everything that they need into one app:

- route planning

- payment for public charging

- booking of hotels with charging

This allows users to travel with ease and can unlock great time and money saving potential.

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What makes our startup unique?

We are the first company to take this 'all-in-one' approach offering a comprehensive product to the EV driver. This and the profitability we can achieve by selling hotels with charging gives us a competitive edge over other EV apps. In addition, the database of destination charging information, which is the backbone of our system, is built by us and unique.

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Our go-to-market plan:

We re going to reach our target audience (EV drivers, 30-65 years, more male than female, higher income) through the following channels:

- Ecosystem Approach: route planning is offered for free and public charging at cost to bring users to the platform and 'lock them in' for hotel bookings (which reduces CAC for hotel bookings)

- Partnerships with other EV apps (later OEMs)

- SEA as most important paid channel for hotel bookings

- SEO as most important organic channel

- SMA for brand building and app downloads

- SMM for brand building

- Reach multiplier (influencers, podcasts, traditional media)

- Referral & Word of mouth will be very important and promising as EV community is very close and collaborative

- Offline (guerilla marketing, fairs,...)

Most important KPIs will be:

- # of numbers

- # of bookings of hotels

- CAC for hotel bookings

- # trips planned on app

- # charging sessions done via app

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Traction & Milestones:

MVP is live since start of the year

Gross Revenue: 75k€

Monthly Users: 14k growing at over 20% MoM

Marketing ROI - increased by 145% since May

Average Price per booking - increased by 60% since May

Returning customers - we now have 23% of our bookings made by repeated customers

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Funding:

100k€ of founders money invested

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Raising:

600k€ at the end of the year 2022