It is common to see Cooltra brand motorcycles circulating on the streets of Barcelona. White and blue, they are the emblem of shared mobility in the city. The company, born in 2006, has popularized the rental of shared motorcycles by the minute, facilitating short journeys through mobile phones. It introduced the service in 2016 and after it other brands such as Acciona, Yego, Movo Cabify or Seat Mó followed. Today there are 3,000 motorcycles in circulation in the city, of which 600 are from Cooltra.
The merit of having been the first goes to the businessman behind it: Timo Buetefisch (Hannover, 1974), a German living in Barcelona who completely goes out of his way for the project. The son of a pharmacist and a teacher, he landed in the Catalan capital to study an MBA at IESE, a master’s degree that would complement his ADE studies acquired at the German school EBS. Then it was the year 2002 and he had given up taking an MBA at Harvard, where he too was admitted. Buetefisch recalls that IESE’s academic quality and life in Barcelona so seduced him that he decided to move permanently. It was in the business school classrooms that he whetted his entrepreneurial appetite. “I realized that my job was not to work for others,” he recalls.
Previously, Buetefisch had worked in different positions, being a consultant in a large company or a tennis and ski instructor in several countries. “When I finished the master’s degree, I ventured to undertake with some classmates. We launched a flower distribution company, but the business did not work out and after that attempt I returned to the world of the big company as a consultant at Bertelsmann”, he indicates. However, the itch to undertake was still there and two years later, without drawing up any plan, he managed to achieve it. “My motorcycle had broken down and the workshop told me that I couldn’t rent another one temporarily. And I thought: here is an opportunity”.
Cooltra was born in 2006 as a conventional rental company and it was a decade later when it really disrupted the market with its commitment to motosharing. Today the business points to a turnover of 50 million euros with internationalization as a great bet for the future. “We are present in more than 100 points throughout Europe and we have a fleet of 20,000 vehicles, mainly electric motorcycles, but also bicycles. We have recently won an important tender in Paris and we are growing strongly in Germany with the rental of fleets to companies”, comments the CEO, who has just obtained 22 million from a syndicated loan between several banks to continue financing the growth of the business.
With more than 400 workers on the staff under his charge, the businessman believes that the key to Cooltra has always been the alignment of the team with the shareholders, the Riberas family (Gestamp) and a group of German family companies that prefer to remain anonymous. In perspective, Buetefisch considers Cooltra as his great life project: “I’ve been at the helm for 17 years, hardly disconnecting for a day. And it doesn’t bother me, on the contrary, I enjoy facing new challenges every day. I hope to continue like this for many more years.” Although he never disconnects, Buetefisch makes the most of his spare time. “I have no children and I have always been a very active person on a social and sporting level. Since I was little I have practiced various sports and now I am fond of kitesurfing, tennis and beach volleyball, a sport that I practice three or four times a week”, he comments as he drives back to Barcelona after spending a few days kitesurfing on the French coast. .
