General Motors (GM) is leading a Series B funding round for $23 million for Yoshi, an on-demand car maintenance service, CNBC reported.
This marks the second time GM’s venture capital arm has invested in Yoshi since 2018, and the round will go toward helping Yoshi hire more employees and expand as the pandemic ends, according to Yoshi Co-Founder and CEO Bryan Frist, according to CNBC.
“COVID has been interesting for us,” he said, CNBC reported. “We obviously took a huge hit when COVID hit, but we are now approaching the levels that we were at coming into it.”
He added that while people are driving less, GM’s contactless services have still been in demand.
Yoshi, founded in 2015, was originally intended as an on-demand fueling company, filling a user’s tank wherever a driver wanted instead of forcing the driver to stop at a gas station.
Since then, it’s expanded and works in oil changes, car washes and windshield fixes in five major U.S. markets, CNBC reported. Frist didn’t say how many customers the company has, but he said Yoshi is conducting tens of thousands of services each month and has registered over 200,000 vehicles. He said almost three-quarters of Yoshi’s revenue still comes from fueling services.
So far, Yoshi has raised over $38 million for expansion plans and opened a new service for GM employees in Michigan, CNBC reported. In June, GM offered to pay Yoshi’s monthly subscription fee in order to access salaried and hourly employees at major campuses and plants in the state, which GM confirmed but didn’t offer further details on.
GM has been involved in what PYMNTS reported is the next great shift for the connected world, as numerous companies bid to acquire its credit card business. Both Goldman Sachs and London’s Barclays are involved. With GM’s smart features on its dashboard, the companies are looking at the potential for drivers to use the card to pay for things like gas or groceries in connection with the technology.