Wheely, a Russian-founded luxury ride-hailing service, hase raised $15 million from a pool of investors that includes UK investment partnership Concentric and three Russian tech businessmen – Oleg Cheltsov, Dmitry Eremeev and Mikhail Sokolov.
Wheely allows customers to book chauffeur-driven journeys both on-demand and pre-booked through an app. Its service is available in six Russian cities, including Moscow and St. Petersburg, and London. The company aims to launch the service in Paris next summer.
Founded in 2010 by Anton Chirkunov, the company registered successively in Switzerland, then Delaware. In 2016 Wheel y raised $13 million in a Series A round. Last year Wheely reported its annual revenues reached $50 million.
Wheely has just moved its headquarters from Moscow to London, with 12 employees already based in the company’s new offices. The decision to relocate from Moscow was to help attract senior leadership talent as the company is expanding internationally.
“When you try to hire executives, they all want to live in London,” Chirkunov said in an interview with Bloomberg. “They’re either already in London or want to move there. They’re not going to want to move to Moscow or Zurich.”
Sources: Vedomosti, Crunchbase, Bloomberg
