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Coronavirus wrecks Poland’s Innogy’s electric car-sharing service
bne IntelliNews
Polish electric power retailer Innogy, an E.ON company, will wrap up its electric car sharing service Innogy Go! in mid-March, the company said.
The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic reduced demand for car sharing, Innogy said. The service’s fleet is 500 BMW i3s operating in Warsaw and also as a test in the mountain resort town of Zakopane between September and November last year.
The service has 100,000 registered users who covered 7mn kilometres in the cars offered on a pay-per-minute basis, Innogy said.
The shutdown of the service is an example of the wide impact of the pandemic across businesses, although there is still no overwhelming crisis.
In the second half of last year, Polish courts finalized bankruptcy proceedings of 210 companies, the Economic Information Bureau KRD, a business intelligence service,
said on February 10, news website bankier.pl reported. Most of the bankrupt companies worked in construction and manufacturing, KRD said.
Overall, however, mass bankruptcies appear unlikely with Poland’s GDP contracting just 2.8% in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic and a recovery of around 4% expected this year.
“The shutdown of the service is an example of the wide impact of the pandemic across businesses, although there is still no overwhelming crisis”
airSlate, Ajax, Genesis and People.ai, as well as software development company Softserve.
Domestic market leaders Rozetka (e-commerce) and Monobank (neobank) are on the same track, the report believes.
Finally, the Ukrainian tech sector showed a certain resilience in this crisis year, said AVentures Capital’s Yevgen Sysoev, who co-authored the report, in a previous exchange with East-West Digital News. “Most companies and sectors, including product startups and IT service companies, returned back to growth in Q3 and we saw a peak of tech investments in Q4. The last quarter of 2020 was the best ever for tech deals, and a number of companies are considering an accelerated path to IPO.”
The report also provides insights on the Ukrainian VC scene, the state startup fund USF, M&As in the field of software outsourcing, international R&D centers, and more.
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