Esports and e-scooters.

Time to scoot

• Less than three weeks after deploying 250 of its distinctive orange e-scooters on the city streets of Adelaide, Australia, 500-backed Neuron Mobility has been granted approval from the UK government for a trial run.
• Starting this weekend, new regulations allowing e-scooter rentals will take place for local residents to test the benefits of e-scooters. Neuron is one of the few e-scooter companies chosen for this exercise.

• Neuron CEO Zachary Wang says, “We are delighted that people in the U.K. will soon be able to benefit from shared e-scooters. They will allow people to continue social distancing while also providing a more efficient travel option…”
• Founded in Singapore in 2016 by Zachary Wang and Harry Yu, the company has operated e-scooter sharing services across Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, and New Zealand.

Protected on and off the bike

• 500-backed London-based insurtech startup Laka has rolled out a new product designed to support policyholders not only on, but also off the bike. Backed by Swiss insurance giant Zurich, the “Recovery” accident and injury policy covers activities such as skiing, surfing, and hiking, and provides post-incident psychological treatments.

• The policy, which costs around £11 per month, offers as much as £1,500 for any medical treatment — be it physio, dental, or mental.
• It also features access to the best specialists as well as virtual GPs, and a curated list of partners whose services include coaching sessions, indoor bike training, and nutritional plans.
• Laka is unlike traditional insurance providers. It operates on a model relying on a community-based system where its customers work as a collective to share the cost of claims that actually happen, rather than ones that may happen.

Why esports is not overhyped

• Lau Kin Wai, co-founder of 500-backed esports network ESPL, is bullish the esports industry will continue to flourish, despite talks it has become overhyped with the proliferation of big-money sponsorships and larger-than-life events.
• “This doesn’t warrant any concerns to me, as e-sports sponsorship is still small compared to traditional sports. E-sports has already a bigger audience than traditional sports, it is only natural for the sponsorship money to shift from traditional sports to e-sports,” Kin Wai says.

• For Kin Wai and the ESPL team, they believe in nurturing amateur gamers by making competitive gaming accessible to them. This, in turn, will pave the future for the esports industry and create its own big stars.
• “In the future, I think we will have world-famous E-sports stars the likes of Formula One’s Lewis Hamilton, for instance. The future is definitely bright for e-sports stars as we continue to grab headlines across the globe.”
• ESPL is a mobile-focused global esports tournament network and online platform that creates rapidly deployable and scalable ecosystems for competitive amateur gaming leagues. It’s currently working with nine countries, including Mexico and India.

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