Booster, a San Mateo-based on-call for fuel delivery service, has raised $56 million in a Series C led with Invus Opportunities’ aid. Strategic traders Enterprise Holdings Ventures and France’s Total Ventures also participated in the financing, as did present backers Madrona Venture Group, Vulcan Capital, Maveron, Conversion Capital, and Dallas-based Perot Jain LP. With the brand new funding, Booster has now raised $88.Five million, given that its inception was past due in 2014. I caught up with Booster CEO and co-founder Frank Mycroft on the telephone the previous day, and he informed me the business enterprise plans to use the new capital to make it bigger into new markets. It runs in over 20 cities, including Dallas/Fort Worth, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles. Next, Booster is eyeing the Pacific Northwest and the East Coast.
The agency launched its cellular gas service in 2015 and has considered that it carried out over 2 million deliveries “to tens of heaps of customers,” keeping with Mycroft. The employer supplies the gas in purple mini gas tankers, and its provider is to be had 24-7. “I got here up with the concept after being at a fuel station one day and figuring out that I changed into not taking part in it, and that quite a good deal, no one enjoys this errand,” he instructed Crunchbase News. Part of Mycroft’s mission was to make the provider “now not only for the rich” but on hand to anybody.
“Our goal becomes to create a handy, complete-provider gasoline station on wheels without charging a good deal extra than gasoline stations, via being similar in fee however extra in value,” he stated. “So we set out to reinvent a century-vintage version with a technology platform that receives the product to people extra thoroughly and sustainably.” To that stop, Booster says fueling on the calls supports road congestion and CO2 emissions and shields “network land and water from the negative results of underground garage tanks.” The organization claims it has avoided the discharge of over 2.32 million kilos of carbon.
Booster has many business enterprise customers, including Fortune one hundred organizations and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. The business enterprise essentially pitches its provider as a perk for personnel at workplace parks and corporate campuses. It also partners with asset proprietors with “lots of tenants,” in line with Mycroft.
People can request an ‘increase’ at paintings through the organization’s app, pin their vehicle location, and get a full tank even as they’re running. It also operates a fleet department with customers such as Stanley Steemer, Two Men and a Truck, Hardin Honda, and Traffic Management Inc. The enterprise’s fleet aspect is doing well, as Booster claims it grew 350 percent 12 months over year. Meanwhile, sales have grown “2 hundred to three hundred percent” yr-over-year. Other offerings consist of tire inflation and windshield wiper replacement.
“We are profitable in our set-up markets,” Mycroft stated. “And now, with our fleet commercial enterprise, (we) have the playbook for wholesome, worthwhile boom transferring forward.” Part of Booster’s fulfillment, Mycroft believes, is on account of the truth that every one of the corporation’s employees, including drivers, are full-time and very own a stake within the corporation. (The employee headcount is pushing 180, which Mycroft estimates is ready twice as much as it was one year ago.) “Drivers are our front line,” he said. “We’re proud to have this version.”
Besides increasing into new markets, Booster plans to keep hiring and specializing in gas within the quick term no matter what Mycroft sees as a capability to be “gasoline agnostic” in the future. Bob Wetzel, vp of corporate development for Enterprise Holdings, stated in a declaration that Booster’s providing addresses “a key operational and logistical assignment” for Enterprise via imparting gas for its motors at one of its huge airport locations. “The cease result is a substantial discount in value, plus a boom in our efficiency,” he brought. “As a result, we diagnosed the capacity of handing over this type of service on a bigger scale nationwide.”
