Ride-hailing startup, Bolt, has raised €628 million ($709 million), at a valuation of €7.4 billion ($8.4 billion) that will give it competitive edge and help it to expand to new markets.

The new investment round was co-led by Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC, with Whale Rock, Owl Rock (a division of Blue Owl), D1, G Squared, Tekne, Ghisallo and other unnamed backers also participating.

In nearly a decade since it was founded, the Estonia-based company has onboarded many services such as shared cars and scooters, restaurant and grocery delivery, and Bolt Market – its 15-minute grocery delivery feature. The company has created a ‘super app’ that is holding its increasing businesses together.

“All of our business units are growing,” founder and CEO Markus Villig said in an interview this week. He explained that even its most mature business, ride hailing, is seeing double digit growth, while the newer businesses, being smaller, are expanding even faster. “The new trend of last year is that private cars are a bad thing and increasingly people want to use other forms of mobility,” he said, adding that Bolt is working on partnering with more city governments to build out its services as part of their updated transportation strategies.

In August last year, Bolt raised €600 million at a valuation of over €4 billion in a Series E also led by Sequoia. At that time, the company has a customer-base of 75 million people. In just four months after the previous round, the company has seen its customer-base adding 25 million more users from 45 countries and more than 400 cities.

But as the company grows, the need to provide top-rated services for its customers grows also. Bolt said it has made attracting and keeping drivers a major focus by paying out better commissions than its rivals.

“There is a massive lack of supply on these platforms, so we have focused on taking the most partner-friendly lowest commission,” Villig said. That has paid off well for Bolt, which has now seen monthly revenues more than double compared to sales pre-COVID, he added.

Bolt is planning to shift from its original target markets, where it has focused for years, to new markets in the West. Founded Taxify eight years ago, in Tallinn, Estonia, Bolt’s mission was to bring ride hailing to emerging markets and countries where other ride-hailing companies like Uber had yet to gain a strong foothold.

The strategy helped it to grow its market share in Africa and Eastern Europe. Now Bolt has learned that there is little difference between emerging markets and developed countries.

“We started off in Eastern Europe and Africa because those markets had a bigger need. They had lower car ownership, higher unemployment [making for a market with many freelance drivers]; it made sense,” said Villig. “But now we’ve learned that this model works everywhere, and it’s actually easier to grow in Western Europe because they are developed markets. We found if you can make this model work in really cheap, frugal markets, then once you go to London or Stockholm, it’s materially easier. And the unit economics are definitely better because the prices are higher.” It’s not a perfect system, though. Working in developed markets, he said, the trade-off is “more regulations,” and the limits that come with those.

In each market, one scaling strategy Bolt plans to use is diversification, offering multiple services within its super app.

“Offering multiple services within a single app not only helps Bolt bring in new customers and cross sell to them, but it does so with essentially zero marketing costs by putting all of the options and cross-promotions within a single app,” said Villig.

“Two elements that set us apart and are turning in our favor are the synergies and the shared costs between these verticals. Most of Bolt’s competitors are generally focused on one thing in each app, and we are not, so it’s easier and less expensive for Bolt to build more services off the back of each other. Now we are passing on those savings for customers,” he added.

With the shift in its scaling strategy and the newly raised fund, Bolt is expected to give Uber, Lyft and Doordash a run for their money as it expands to new markets.

Speaking on the round, Andrew Reed, a partner at Sequoia, told TechCrunch in a statement: “We’re excited to deepen our partnership with Markus and Bolt to further their mission to make urban travel affordable, sustainable and safe. At Sequoia, we believe in the global potential for technology and entrepreneurship and have been inspired by Bolt’s growth from Tallinn, Estonia to over 400 cities and 100 million customers across Europe and Africa. We’re eager to help them expand their footprint, increase their product offering and improve the quality of life in cities for the long term.”

Penultimate week, precisely on 6th January 2022, in a televised interview when asked about the government’s plan for the dwindling Nigeria’s power sector, President Muhammadu Buhari said his administration was ready to invest in solar panels towards boosting electricity generation in the country.

Aside from this avowal, it’s noteworthy that so many other announcements and moves had been made by the government towards revamping Nigeria’s power sector, yet the maltreated baby still cries woefully in the backyard.

Nigeria’s power sector has over time been obviously politicized by the country’s leaders at various quarters, many have wondered if the anomaly is being enjoyed by those meant to solve it.

Just recently, the President sacked the Power Minister and instantly replaced him with another. This perhaps was born out of his intent to see a better Nigeria as regards electricity generation cum consumption.

Last year, the 9th House of Reps led by Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, recently, announced its deep determination to commence investigations into the power sector, perhaps with a view to ascertaining why the huge spending so far was unable to address the country’s electricity conundrum.

But unfortunately, till date, nothing tangible has been heard from the Green Chamber concerning the awaited investigations as was announced by its leadership. It sounds ridiculous, but is real and true.

The country’s generation sub-sector comprises about 23 grid-connected generating plants. These plants are in operation around the country with a total installed capacity of 10,396MW, with available capacity of 6,056MW.

The thermal-based generation has an installed capacity of 8,457.6MW, with available capacity of 4,996MW. The hydro-based generation possesses a total installed capacity of barely 1,938.4MW, with available capacity of 1,060MW.

It’s noteworthy that the thermal segment has been sold to the private sector, except the Sapele Power Plc – generating about 414MW – that is 51% sold. Similarly, the hydro segment is under long-term concession.

In its effort to increase the level of power generation in the country, the Federal Government (FG) in 2004 under the leadership of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, incorporated the Niger-Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) as a public sector funded emergency intervention scheme.

The NDPHC was imbued with the mandate to manage the National Integrated Power Projects (NIPP), which essentially involved the construction of identified critical infrastructure in the generation, transmission, and distribution as well as the natural gas supply sub-sectors of the electric power value chain.

In total, the NIPP power stations were targeted to add about 4,774MW of electricity to the national grid network. Some of these stations have been privatized while plans are underway to sell the remaining ones to interested investors towards increasing private-sector participation in the power sector, thereby improving the ongoing reform programme of the FG.

In furtherance of the reform policy direction, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has in the past licensed many private Independent Power Producers (IPPs). Some of the IPPs are reportedly at various stages of project development.

This analysis implies that the generation sub-sector is currently operating under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP), with almost 97% participation of the private investors. But the transmission segment is completely managed by the FG, whilst the distribution sub-sector is being operated and managed by private investors.

It’s imperative to acknowledge that, even if all these generating plants are in good form, or functioning as expected, their total installed capacity will still not generate the needed Megawatts (MW) of electricity across the federation.

Recently, by implementing reforms, Nigeria targeted 40,000MW generating capacity by 2020. Going by the estimate, she needed to expend approximately $10bn per annum on the power sector, to achieve the motive.

Taking a painstaking cognizance of the abridged survey or review, as presented above, we would understand that the country’s lingering power crisis ought to be blamed on the epileptic policies guiding the sector, not the ability of the minister as being perceived.

The fact is that, even if the best brain and most active technocrat is in charge of the Power Ministry, the sector will continue to wail and bleed. This shows that the country’s power anomaly needs to be addressed from the background.

The FG needs to, as a matter of urgency, decentralize the transmission grid, thereby giving room for each region or zone to manage their respective grids. This measure would help to eliminate the unending burden occasioned by theft, criminality, and corruption being experienced by the national grid. Hence, the private sector ought to be allowed to invest in the power transmission. There’s a need for candid legislation in this regard.

In the same vein, healthy policies should also be created to encourage generation of electricity from renewable energy sources such as solar. This wouldn’t need to be connected to the national grid, hence the various states can see to its operations and management on a daily basis.

The policy should equally create an enabling environment to enable our trained technologists or engineers to manufacture the needed devices for the generation. We as a country can currently boast of the needed manpower; what is then required is just a sincerity of purpose to trigger the needed change.

So, as the President is apparently in a move to invest in renewable energy such as Solar, he ought to engage the cognoscenti to educate him on the nitty-gritty in respect of the tech-driven measure.

More so, formidable policies must be formulated by the FG to discourage the endless rampant importation of conventional household/industrial power generating devices whose operations depend solely on fuel, diesel, or gas, as the case may be. The importers of the equipment won’t live to see a functional power sector in Nigeria, hence the need for a policy or legislation to tame their unwholesome activities in the country.

The political will must be worn like clothing to actualize the people’s aim. We must therefore look inwards towards solving our collective problem, rather than being myopic or shying away from the truth.

It’s imperative for the government to acknowledge that Nigeria’s power conundrum cannot only be tackled practically, but politically. It’s therefore time to walk the talk.