Grishin Robotics, an international venture fund with Russian roots, has taken part in a $63 million funding round for the Brazilian stationless bicycle-sharing platform Yellow.
The round was led by Silicon Valley investment firm GGV Capital. It is the largest Series A ever for a Latin American startup, according to TechCrunch.
In April this year, Grishin Robotics teamed up with Brazilian venture fund monashees+ to lead a previous $9 million round of funding.
Touting itself as “revolutionary and game-changing,” Yellow was founded by three Brazilian entrepreneurs Ariel Lambrecht, Eduardo Musa and Renato Freitas in the summer of last year.
“Brazil is a very attractive market for smart bikes and other innovative means of personal transportation. Yellow is founded by a unique team of entrepreneurs, who created 99, the first unicorn company in the field of transportation in Brazil,” said Grishin Robotics founder Dmitry Grishin in April in an exchange with VC.ru.
Launched in 2012, Grishin Robotics initially focused exclusively on robotics, then started showing interest in such areas as collaborative and material handling robots, AI and data analytics, industrial IoT and other hardware or software innovation. In 2016 Grishin announced a new $100 million fund to invest in the USA and Europe.
The fund has invested in several other bike-hailing services, including Singapore-based Obike, to Gobee.bike in Hong Kong and the Spin in the USA.
