Delfast founder and CEO Daniel Tonkopi talks e-bikes in Ukraine and managing remotely throughout an army invasion.
When Daniel Tonkopi based Delfast in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2014, he had no purpose of creating and promoting electrical motorcycles. He additionally by no means expected that his corporate can be stuck up in a battle with Russia or that his motorcycles would grow to be army cars. However at 43, Tonkopi, a local of Almaty, Kazakhstan, now unearths himself residing in Los Angeles, working an e-bike corporate and remotely managing dozens of staff residing in a battle zone. In Would possibly, Tonkopi made headlines when he shared photographs on Fb of Ukrainian opponents the usage of Delfast motorcycles to hold anti-tank guns to the entrance, demonstrating but any other use case for electrified two-wheelers.
“Our motorcycles are nonetheless running regardless of damages,” he advised me on a video name previous this month.
Tonkopi moved to Ukraine from Kazakhstan in 2009. He’d been running for KazMunayGas, the state-owned oil and fuel corporate, as a mission supervisor construction fuel stations when he made up our minds to move to Kyiv to check out his hand as an entrepreneur. The fashion on the time was once to construct clones of a hit U.S. tech firms, so Tonkopi made a model of Yelp for Japanese Europe. It was once, by means of his personal admission, a flop, as have been a number of makes an attempt that got here after. “I was a professional in the entire conceivable errors and the way not to make a startup,” he says.
Delfast started as a one-hour supply corporate. (The identify is brief for “we ship speedy.”) Tonkopi sought after to make use of e-bikes for the carrier as a result of they have been affordable, fast, zero-emissions and didn’t require couriers to pedal for hours on finish. When he couldn’t in finding motorcycles with lengthy sufficient battery existence to paintings all day, he made up our minds to check out construction his personal. His Frankenstein creations became heads. “We heard numerous asks from random other people. ‘Good day, are you promoting those motorcycles?’” he says. So, in 2017, Delfast introduced a crowdfunding marketing campaign, raised $165,000 and bought 44 e-bikes.
Over the following 3 years, Delfast functioned each as a courier corporate and a web-based e-bike store. In 2020, a couple of days after Covid lockdowns started, Tonkopi bought the supply trade to a direct-to-consumer meat supplier in Ukraine. Delfast now sells a unmarried e-bike style, the Most sensible 3.0, by the use of its site and a small community of impartial motorcycle retail outlets. It has a most sensible velocity of fifty miles in step with hour, a variety of as much as 200 miles and a sticky label worth of $6,999. Closing yr, Delfast bought about 200 devices, most commonly to consumers in america. Thus far this yr, says Tonkopi, gross sales are working at triple that tempo.
Closing fall, after understanding that 80% of the corporate’s consumers have been in america, Delfast opened an place of job in Whittier, California, out of doors Los Angeles, the place Tonkopi and a couple of others paintings. The rest 30 staff are nonetheless in Ukraine. Tonkopi spoke with Bloomberg about e-bikes as guns, managing a startup via battle, and the Delfast product pipeline. The dialog has been edited for readability and duration. You have got 30 or so other people in Ukraine. How have you ever controlled that group of workers for the reason that battle started? Ranging from February twenty fourth, the ones have been difficult weeks, particularly the primary week, once we didn’t know what was once going down and what to do. We had some monetary reserves, sufficient for 3 months of wage for all our group of workers, so we advised everyone, ‘You don’t have to fret, you’re going to have your wage it doesn’t matter what, no less than for 3 months.’
And we equipped a few of them with enhance to relocate. We discovered some properties and flats in more secure puts. As an example, one girl used to are living in Kherson, a town absolutely occupied by means of Russia. At one level, Russian police or army forces got here to her area. They requested her to turn them her smartphone, her pc and so forth. They discovered anti-Russian messages and memes in her telephone. So that they deleted the entire knowledge in her telephone and stated, ‘Ok, now your smartphone can have a brand new existence. And you’re going to come to our police station the next day to come at 11 a.m. And you’re going to have new existence as smartly.’ That was once actually horrifying. She didn’t need to have any roughly new existence with Russia. So certainly one of our gross sales supervisor helped to seek out her a automotive in Kherson and to flee. She left to Odessa that evening. Odessa is below assault as smartly. There is not any protected position in Ukraine, however it’s reasonably more secure. Are other people now ready to do their jobs? Sure. That was once the primary weeks. Persons are nonetheless sitting in bomb shelters. They are living of their flats or properties but if they listen air-raid sirens, they have got to enter bomb shelters. It’s consistent bombing. Each Monday begins with a Zoom name with everybody, we ask them how they’re, if they’re protected, what’s occurring, after which we transfer directly to our same old trade problems.
What’s loopy is that throughout the battle, our engineers have advanced a unconditionally new product. They have been uninterested in sitting within the basement and uninterested in being afraid, they usually sought after to transport their power and inspiration into one thing new. They usually created a brand new style for america marketplace, which we’re going to unveil at first of August. Do you may have a reputation for it? We do, however it’s nonetheless into consideration. It has a smaller battery and decrease velocity than our Most sensible motorcycle. We can do our best possible to make it inexpensive so extra other people will have the ability to use it. How did a few of your e-bikes finally end up within the battle? When the battle started, we made up our minds that we’re going to lend a hand the folks of Ukraine and we’re going to donate 5% of all our gross sales earnings as an organization. And we’ve donated 3 e-bikes — two of our Most sensible 3.0 motorcycles to Ukrainian army forces and one prototype to the volunteer department. They’re the usage of this prototype for his or her clinical body of workers. 3 motorcycles are what we had in our amenities in the beginning of the battle. We ship portions and semi-assembled motorcycles from China to California. And we’ve our inventory right here in Los Angeles. We now have simply an R&D heart in Ukraine. We did not have many spare portions in Kyiv.
The army adjusted them. They made an extra rear trunk for containing rocket launchers. They are saying it really works smartly. In line with their comments, our motorcycle is maneuverable, it’s quiet and it can’t be noticed by means of warmth sensors. So they may be able to come to a place, do no matter they wish to do, after which straight away depart with out being noticed. They have got a tricky state of affairs. Russian troops are attacking our military. It’s scorching. It’s actually scorching. Our Ukrainian infantrymen, now and again they arrive again wounded and with some damages on their vehicles and cars. Our motorcycles are nonetheless running regardless of damages. It operates smartly in the most up to date stipulations. And you might be additionally fundraising now? Sure, a couple of yr in the past, at first of 2021, we did an fairness crowdfunding spherical at fundable.com. Other people from Ukraine believed in our corporate. 300 of them invested. The common test was once about $10,000. So we raised $3.4 million. That helped us to create our R&D heart in Ukraine, to transport our headquarters to California and to create a inventory of motorcycles. We invested so much into our provide chain, into logistics, and we reduced our lead time from 4 months, twelve months in the past, to 2 weeks nowadays.
Then we introduced a Collection A challenge spherical in the beginning of this yr. We paused on the finish of February, however now I’m again at it. The objective for the spherical is $20 million. We’ve gained $2 million and at the moment I’m in negotiation for any other $5 million. We now have a product, we’ve a product plan, we’ve a platform, we’ve proprietary applied sciences, we’ve gross sales, and we’re rising, even with out out of doors funding. We want funding to make the expansion sooner. We’re rising at 3x. We need to develop 20x. I’m construction a multibillion-dollar corporate right here.
