Which will focus on the French Click & Boat, the Airbnb of boats
Click & Boat, the French online boat rental platform, has announced two alliances with the Permira fund and with the American company Boats Group. All the details
Click & Boat, the French online boat rental platform active in the European market, today announced two alliances: the first with the British fund Permira (active in private equity investments and with 44 billion euros of assets), and the second with Boats Group, Miami-based company that operates the leading global online marine markets.
Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Paris, Click & Boat connects boating enthusiasts through 40,000 boats in more than 600 destinations around the world. The announcement was made by one of the two founders, Jérémy Bismuth from Marseille, who has ambitious projects : "We want to become the first group in the world not only for the online rental of boats, but also for services in a broader sense concerning the nautical ".
BIRTH AND RISE OF CLICK & BOAT
Click & Boat was born from an idea of Bismuth and the Breton Edouard Gorioux, who in 2013 launched the first version of the online platform. From that moment on, the start-up starts and never stops: in a few years the investors, the incubator of the Dauphine University of Paris, boat owners and customers arrive. The concept closely follows the Airbnb model : the platform connects boat owners (but also skippers or boat captains who want to make them available) with people interested in renting them.
In 2017 Click & Boat opens to professional advertisers and charter companies, then, with a series of acquisitions – of the rivals Océans Evasion and Océans Voyages in France, of Scansail in Germany and of Nautal in Spain -, from start-up it becomes a group. Today the platform has one million users, develops an annual turnover of around 100 million euros, has main offices in Paris, Marseille and Barcelona and employs 300 direct employees.
CLICK & BOAT LANDS IN AMERICA
Permira's investment is strategic for Click & Boat since, by guaranteeing access to the vast public of consumers of Boats Group – the industry leader in the United States with a pool of 20 million monthly boat users -, it will allow the French player to expand its horizons, consolidating its position worldwide and accelerating growth in the North American market.
David Erlong, principal of Permira, said that “this transaction marks another positive step to complete our investment in the yachting sector, with two major players in the market joining forces. We are thrilled to support Jérémy and Edouard's project and support Click & Boat's next phase of growth in North America and Europe ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/clickboat-noleggio-barche-online/ on Mon, 19 Jul 2021 14:06:40 +0000.