Flight-sharing startup Wingly has announced a $3.8 million (euros 3.5m) capital increase from its historic investors, including the Innovacom Venture Capital fund that already supports aircraft manufacturers Elixir Aircraft and Aura Aero.

Founded in 2015, the Wingly platform has officially launched in France (with 40 per cent of the market share), Germany (35 per cent), the UK (10 per cent), Switzerland and Austria, and already offers flights throughout Europe. The company recently celebrated its 100,000th passenger flight and has achieved an average turnover growth of more than 30 per cent per year since 2019, including the COVID years.

With its proven business model, this new round of financing will enable the company to achieve the volumes it needs to be profitable and set a course for profitable growth, while accelerating the roll-out of its electric aircraft flights, which it was the first to offer to the public from summer 2023.

Co-founder Emeric de Waziers comments: "With this round of financing, we will be able to demonstrate the profitability of our model before launching our platform in other European countries. In other words, our aim is to become profitable before Wingly turns 10 in 2025."

Wingly is also opening up its capital to its community and to the public via a crowdfunding operation on the international Crowdcube platform, which has raised funds for international startups such as Revolut, Qonto and Vestiaire Collective. Wingly offers its members the same investment conditions as its institutional investors.

"For Wingly, it is a way of engaging and uniting its community of over 450,000 members, including 25,000 private pilots," he continues. "We always had requests from our members, particularly our pilot members, to invest in our startup when announcing our past fundraises. It is the perfect occasion. There's nothing more beautiful and logical than sharing the success of our company with the users who bring it to life every day."