How Bolt Survived An 85% Revenue Crash And Became Europe's Ride-Hailing Champion (Markus Villig, Founder & CEO)
In 2013, on an Estonian island of just 10,000 residents, a teenager borrowed €5,000 from his parents and decided to take on Uber. Twelve years later, Markus Villig leads Bolt, a company operating in 50+ countries, generating nearly €3 billion in revenue, and standing as one of the only European tech companies competing at true global scale. Rather than going head-to-head with incumbents in their strongest markets, Bolt expanded through underserved cities, emerging economies, and overlooked segments of urban transport. When COVID erased 85% of its revenue in weeks, the company didn’t retreat; it staged a kind of corporate “eucatastrophe,” pivoting into food delivery across nearly 20 countries in what became a company-wide sprint.
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- Uploaded May 26, 2026
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Speaker A: It was 2020. The company was already fairly big. Suddenly you started seeing this news where there's a virus spreading. And then in a couple of weeks it got so bad that the business declined 85%. That isn't an easy position to be in. We very quickly pivoted to food delivery. We launched suddenly in about 15 countries across Europe and Africa with a food product. We were very lucky in the timings. It actually worked out really well. Speaker B: You've read Lord of the Rings 5 times. Why that book and why so many times?
Speaker A: Lord of the Rings somehow stuck with me. Sort of the narrative arc of how you can have people come from all sorts of small places and make something great. Operate in the world coming from a small village in Estonia really resonated with me as well. We operate in 50 countries. We have more than 200,000 vehicles in more than 200 cities, and we custom design them. We have our own team in China for the manufacturing. We're profitable for the last 2 years. We have a tech team of 800 people.
We have taken a lot of effort to make sure that we design the best hardware we can. This sort of more experimentation R&D culture, I think, starting to pay off. Speaker C: In 2013, a 19-year-old from a tiny Estonian island town, borrows €5,000 from his parents, and decides to take on Uber. Speaker B: Just over 12 years later, and Bolt now operates in more than 50 countries, generates nearly €2 billion in revenue, and is one of the only European startups competing at a genuinely global scale. Markus Vilig is the CEO, and he's still only 32.
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