Voi is a Swedish app company that may be best known for their electric scooters that have been placed around various Swedish cities. The company is also established in France, Spain, and Portugal.
Like many other app companies, Voi builds their business model on “gig logic”, wherein so-called “hunters” pick up the scooters at the end of the day, take them home, charge them, and then place them around the city the next morning. The compensation for this work is per scooter, and the pay is between 50 and 150 swedish crowns (sek) per scooter, depending on how easy it is to get it, how long its been uncharged, and the time of day. What the average compensation seems to be is very unclear, but according to Dagens Industri it seems to be about 70 sek per scooter.
It’s not clear to the public how Voi functions for their workers, “hunters”. The company markets itself with phrases like “be your own boss” and “make money while you sleep”.
In practice it points to being about 5-6 hours of labour five days a week. The job as a “hunter” demands that you leave the scooters at specific points around the city between five and seven o’clock every morning. Stockholm Direkt writes that one of the “hunters” have to do heavy lifting and work uncomfortable hours. The job also demands that you have a lot of space at home to be able to charge all the scooters in one night.
One reddit thread has several danish “hunters” speaking about unpaid wages and low compensation.
Among the investors in Voi there are, among others, Vostok New Ventures, an extension of Vostok Nafta that made big investments in oil- and gas sectors in the former Soviet Union. Even the british venture capitalist corporation Balderton Capital is a big investor, with 452 million sek invested. Some of the largest individual investors are Cristina Stenbeck from Kinnevik and the Amazon boss Jeff Wilke.
The CEO of Voi Technology AB is Fredrik Hjelm, and in the board of directors of Voi sits, among others, Per Brilioth from the previously mentioned Vostok Nafta, and Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, previously highly ranked within Uber.