Electric vehicle taxi company Nopea ride has announced plans to exit the Kenyan market.
The company, in a statement issued on Tuesday, said that it had begun the process of closing down its operations in the country after one of its majority shareholders declared insolvency.
The company attributed its decision to shut down its operations in the country to the Covid-19 pandemic, which it said had affected its business.
“Following the announcement that our majority shareholder, EkoRent Oy, has declared insolvency in Finland, we are sad to announce that InfraCo Africa Limited, the minority shareholder, has now filed for the liquidation of EkoRent Africa Limited in the High Court of Kenya. This is due to the fact that EkoRent Oy was the principal financier of EkoRent Africa Limited and all the technical knowledge on the running of the business lay with EkoRent Oy. A mention date has been set for 13th December 2022,” the statement said.
NopeaRide service was first launched in Kenya in August of 2018 under the name NopiaRide by a Finnish company EkoRent Oy founded in 2014.
At the time, the company had only started with about three electric vehicles and two chargers.
However, towards the end of 2019, Nopea received new funding and placed orders for additional electric vehicles and chargers, a plan it said was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Many of the additional vehicles arrived in Nairobi at just about the same time when the strict Covid-19 curfew rules were put in place in March 2020. Those rules lead to daily kilometers driven by Nopea vehicles dropping approximately 60 percent overnight. The timing of these additional Nopea vehicles arriving in Kenya could not have been much worse,” the company said.
The company also linked its departure from the country to the failure to raise additional funding to support and expand its operations.
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