Uklon continues to expand its own urban mobility ecosystem. After launching a service for selling bus tickets, and earlier – delivery, the company enters the market of electric scooters and announces the acquisition of one of the Ukrainian operators.
There are several important details in this agreement. First, Uklon is not buying a market leader, but rather a player that can become the company’s entry point into a new segment. Secondly, the amount of the deal turned out to be significantly lower than the estimates that appeared on the market even a year ago. Third, the deal was announced now, but its financial close is not expected until next quarter.
The company is testing a new direction that is significantly different from its core business. If ride hailing, delivery or sale of tickets remain mostly digital services, then the rental of electric scooters requires a physical infrastructure: a fleet of equipment, its charging and repair, logistics and interaction with cities.
And you will have to pay for all this. Therefore, this agreement looks more like a step into a new niche, where leadership is still far away.
Will Uklon be able to turn the purchased business into a major market player when scooters with its brand appear on the streets of Ukrainian cities, and will the company manage to scale the service in large regional centers?
What happened
The Uklon company signed an agreement to acquire 100% of the corporate rights of the Ukrainian e-scooter operator e-Wings. The amount of the deal is UAH 97.6 million (about $2.2 million).
After its closure, the e-Wings electric scooter rental service will be integrated into the Uklon application. For the company, this actually means an entry into the micromobility segment and a logical expansion of its own urban transport ecosystem.
Uklon’s interest in this market has been known for a long time. Still in the summer of 2025 Scroll.media wrotethat the company is negotiating with Jet – one of the largest operators of electric scooters in Ukraine, along with Bolt. At that time, Uklon confirmed negotiations with several market players, but did not name specific companies. According to the publication, Uklon expected to acquire the business for about $7 million, while Jet valued it at $10 million.
The market of electric scooters in Ukraine already has several big players with their own fleet of equipment, infrastructure and digital services. For example, Bolt works in 12 Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv and 10 other regional centers.
Jet company in its offer for partners indicatesthat the service covers 38 cities, has a fleet of 12,000 scooters, cooperates with 19 partners and serves 1.5 million customers.
The Ukrainian micromobility operator e-Wings was founded in Lviv in 2020. By data company, as of 2024, its fleet consisted of 3,000 scooters in nine cities. By 2025, e-Wings declared a goal of scaling up to 10,000 scooters in 20 cities.
However, the declared growth did not occur. The company currently operates in 11 cities, including six regional centers: Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Odesa, Sumy, Ternopil and Chernihiv. The total fleet of e-Wings includes the same 3,000 electric scooters as in 2024.
The e-Wings franchise offers two cooperation formats. The S package is designed to launch 150 or more scooters and requires a lump-sum payment of $1,000. and investments of about USD 135,000. Package M (from 350 scooters) involves a contribution of USD 2,000. and investing about 300,000 dollars.
The monthly royalty is 14% of the income – for the use of the software and technical support. The estimated payback period of the invested funds is from 12 to 24 months.
What is the deal?
Against the backdrop of Uklon’s previous negotiations with larger players in the market, the e-Wings deal, which is more than three times less than the amount involved in the negotiations with Jet, looks more like a ticket to a market that is significantly different from the company’s main revenue model than an attempt to take an immediate leadership position.
Until now, Uklon has remained primarily a digital service. The company does not have its own fleet of taxis, delivery services or large physical infrastructure in cities. This is reflected in its financial indicators: net EBITDA in the first quarter of 2026 amounted to UAH 538.9 million (USD 12.4 million), and the business margin reached 37.8%. Such indicators are due to the absence of costs for maintaining one’s own fleet and the ability to quickly scale digital processes.
In renting electric scooters, the logic is different. In this business, you need to have your own fleet of equipment, place it in cities, charge, repair and maintain it, purchase new scooters, interact with municipalities and build an operational network.
“It is much more difficult to enter the market of electric scooters in Ukraine today than it was four or five years ago. The market has passed the stage of rapid capture and is in the phase of mature consolidation with the dominance of individual players,” says Anton Milka, general manager of Bolt Micromobility in Ukraine.
That is why e-Wings can be important for Uklon not so much as an acquisition of a specific company, but as a way to quickly gain a foothold in a new market.
“It seems that e-Wings is not the leader of the Ukrainian market. It may be present in a number of cities, but it does not appear to be a dominant player. Therefore, this agreement is more about the starting position from which Uklon will try to scale further”, – explains the interlocutor of the EP in the market.
According to him, the entrance fee consists of two parts. The first is the amount that Uklon pays for the company. It is probably not significant for a business of this scale, especially when considering Uklon in the context of Kyivstar. The second part is more important: how much money will have to be invested after the purchase.
For example, if Uklon wants to seriously enter Kyiv and compete there with Bolt, it may require millions of dollars of investment. It will be necessary to purchase thousands of electric scooters, place them around the city, provide service and form an operational team. Therefore, the key challenge for Uklon is not the deal itself, but scaling the business after it.
According to Milka, in order to gain a significant market share – 10-20% in large cities, you need at least 1,000 electric scooters designed specifically for sharing. The cost of one such scooter, including transportation and customs payments, is 800-1000 euros. To this should be added the costs of marketing, administration and software. And already then calculate the minimum amount of investment required to launch the service.
He adds that it usually takes 6 to 12 months from the time the decision to launch is made to actually starting work. Seasonality in the e-scooter sharing business should also be taken into account.
Another interesting point is that the deal was announced now, but its financial close is expected later. This may mean that some restructuring or a number of legal and operational conditions must be met before the purchase can be completed. “Kyivstar” is a public company and may not want to take on all the risks of the asset in its current form, so the seller must first “clean up” the business structure, documents or other issues,” explains the EP source in the market.
What it gives the company
The rental market of electric scooters in Ukraine, despite considerable competition, continues to grow, as does the demand for this type of transport among citizens. “Over the past year, the number of trips increased by 5%, and the average distance was 2.7 kilometers. This confirms that scooters are actively used for daily “last mile” trips,” Milka said.
According to EP interlocutors in the company, micromobility has long been one of the potential areas of development. The idea of launching electric scooters in Uklon was considered even before the Great War, and in recent years the market was more actively studied and possible entry scenarios were considered.
“In this market, it is important to be a leader or at least one of the strongest players. Otherwise, it is difficult to make money. The leader has more users, better recognition, a higher density of scooters in the city and a stronger position in negotiations. If the company remains a secondary or local player, it is more difficult for it to dictate terms, return investments and compete for users,” – explains the interlocutor of the EP in the market.
Before the deal, the company’s management researched how this business works. However, a logical question arises: why buy a non-market leader that does not have a strong presence in key cities?
The answer may lie in the details of business development, for example, what kind of scooter fleet will Uklon form and what operating model does the acquired company have. For the user, the most important thing is that the scooter is convenient and accessible in the right place. For businesses, other key parameters are: how often equipment breaks down, how much it costs to repair, charge, and maintain it, as well as how quickly it pays off.
That is why the value of the deal can be not only in the number of scooters or presence in cities, but in the expertise of the team. If she really understands how to manage the fleet, maintain the equipment and scale into new markets, this could be a major asset for Uklon.
e-Wings already has a customer base of 500,000 users who have made 4 million trips. However, there will be no rapid scaling immediately after the announcement of the deal. Until the transfer of funds, Uklon does not plan to dramatically increase the fleet of scooters or enter new cities.
According to Uklon CEO Serhii Hryshkov, it is still too early to talk about scaling. First, the company needs to finalize the deal, figure out the e-Wings operating model and test the integration of the service into its own ecosystem.
According to Milk, a formed user base from another business vertical can play an important role in the beginning of the service.
“However, when launching the Bolt sharing service in Kyiv, we saw the opposite: when people were first interested in the new service and then transformed into ridehailing users. And even now, we observe an organic flow of audience between all Bolt business areas.
For example, a user opens the application to call a car, but sees that due to traffic jams it is faster and cheaper to drive 2 kilometers on a nearby scooter. This synergy works both ways, closing the concept of the last mile,” he says.
At the same time, it has not been determined exactly when scooters under the Uklon brand will appear on the streets of Ukrainian cities. The company does not directly answer whether this will happen in 2026 or the following year. The main task after closing the deal will be the gradual migration of e-Wings users to the Uklon application. Hryshkov explains that this process should be as seamless as possible for users, but at the same time it will take some time.
And if you perceive “time” through the well-known saying about money, then the company definitely has it. In Ukraine, Uklon remains one of the leaders of the ride-hailing market, has strong financial indicators, and its business is actively growing.
In the first quarter of 2026, the platform generated more than UAH 1.4 billion in revenue. In fact, Uklon now independently provides more than 10% of Kyivstar’s total revenue and almost half of its digital revenue.
