Gridwise Raises $12.7M to Scale Its Gig Mobility Platform for Gig Workers, Cities, and Enterprises
PITTSBURGH, May 26, 2022 (Newswire.com) - Gridwise, the leading business app for rideshare and delivery drivers, announced today a $12.7 million Series A round led by Crosslink Capital with participation from Autotech Ventures, Switch Ventures, Massive VC, Mountain State Capital, Scribble Ventures, 412 Venture Fund, Riverfront Ventures, and DashAngels (a DoorDash angel syndicate).
With this latest capital infusion, Gridwise will expand its team to support the continued growth of its gig driver network, add new product capabilities to continue to help drivers maximize earnings, and rapidly scale its enterprise data analytics business. This Series A raise comes as the result of the company's 400% year-over-year revenue run-rate growth and contributes to a total of $20 million in investment capital raised to date.
Co-founders Ryan Green (CEO) and Brian Finamore (CTO) set out to improve the way people and goods move in cities, with the understanding that a large part of today's mobility is driven by the rideshare and delivery gig workforce. These gig workers face the ongoing challenges of best utilizing their time to maximize earnings and tracking their financial performance across all platforms they work for, which Green and Finamore faced personally in their experience driving for Uber and Lyft.
The Gridwise app provides drivers with unique insights to help them continuously understand when and where to drive, informs them who to work for, and provides a centralized view into drivers' earnings, expenses, and mileage tax deductions. The app also offers access to modern worker benefits such as dental, vision, various insurance products, affordable phone plans, credit boosters, and more. Since launching the app, Gridwise has become a leader in the industry, representing over 10% of all U.S. active gig drivers each month, and has helped drivers track over $5 billion in earnings and 100 million trips across 60 rideshare and delivery platforms in order to improve gig workers' performance and earning potential.
"Drivers have been dealing with a significant amount of challenges that stem from individual gig platforms' limitations in providing them the insights and benefits they need to best operate their part-time or full-time gig business," said Finamore. "We are able to empower this rapidly growing workforce with a platform that helps drivers truly understand their performance, find new work opportunities, and continuously optimize how they work, regardless of which platforms they work for."
As the driver network has rapidly grown, the Gridwise platform possesses one of the most comprehensive gig mobility datasets that exists. By capturing billions of mobility data points, the company can clearly understand supply and demand patterns, worker wages, and utilization across all gig mobility platforms. Gridwise leverages these data network effects to produce unique insights in the app for drivers and also power its new enterprise data-as-a-service platform known as Gridwise Analytics.
"Partnering with top-tier mobility, finance, and gig economy investors to scale our data capabilities will further empower not only workers but also enterprises across 19 industries that we've already validated. We've brought to market the first ground truth accessible gig mobility insights that can enable enterprises and cities to improve their operational planning, inform go-to-market, fairly compensate workers and offer better site selection," said Green. "Gridwise Analytics further enables us to execute on our mission of improving the way people and goods move in cities by providing first-party insight into that gig mobility activity at a time when this data has been completely inaccessible."
"Gridwise has built an innovative mobility data platform leveraging its unique access to the gig mobility industry. We believe this has uniquely positioned the business to build a multi-pronged business model while empowering gig economy drivers at the core," says David Silverman from Crosslink Capital. "It's rare to find a company that can truly help satisfy the needs of individual end-users while also making a significant impact on enterprises, governments, and corporate stakeholders. We look forward to supporting the Gridwise team on their mission to be the top mobility data platform for all stakeholders."
Burak Cendek, partner at Autotech Ventures, "As a transportation-focused fund, we've been observing the pain points experienced by gig economy workers very closely and believe that Gridwise's category-leading product is much-needed. Ryan and Brian's thoughtful product and go-to-market strategy enabled them to reach user density rapidly which unlocked vast opportunities to leverage a unique mobility data set that we are very excited for."
About Gridwise
Gridwise is a rapidly growing platform that has developed a suite of gig mobility solutions that enable gig workers, cities, and enterprises to leverage the most powerful gig mobility data insights in the industry, empowering their operations. The Gridwise app is the leading business platform for gig economy drivers, helping them maximize their earnings and track their business performance all in one place. The app empowers 10% of U.S. drivers to run their businesses with unique gig-demand insights, earnings and activity tracking, performance reporting, and a marketplace of gig worker benefits. Growing one of the largest gig-driver networks in the mobility industry has enabled Gridwise to amass the most comprehensive gig mobility dataset in the industry and capitalize on a $50 billion data as a service (DaaS) opportunity through Gridwise Analytics. For more information, visit https://gridwise.io.
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Source: Gridwise, Inc.
