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ABOUT US
What is BikeMesh?
Bike Mesh started as an ambitious idea sparked by a journey through the Catalyst startup program in Belfast. Founded by Michael Kelly, alongside co-founders Graham and Sam, we're on a mission to revolutionize the cycling experience.
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After reaching the finals of Catalyst’s prestigious Co-Founder Program, we've been turning that vision into reality. With secured funding and strategic partnerships, we're now bringing innovative solutions to cyclists everywhere.
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Bike Mesh represents innovation, resilience, and connected mobility— designed for Belfast, built for the world.
Michael Kelly/ Founder
What problem are we trying to solve?
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We are aiming to reduce bike theft and improve the health metrics available to cyclists.
It is known that 3-4 million bicycles in Europe alone are stolen annually, and many are not recovered by their owners. Traditional methods for bike security, namely locks, are often ineffective.
For countries that more accurately record data on bike theft we can see this represents a high proportion of crime. In Germany for example the number of criminal offences registered by the German police in 2022, by type indicated that of 1,780,783 thefts (cars, burglary, street crime) bicycles represented 344,669 (or 19.34%).
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The cycling markets.
​​​In the world today there’s an increasing amount of cycling enthusiasts, the graphs show the market is increasing post Covid19 pandemic.
As more bikes are sold, it also will proportionally increase bike crime, and therefore potential customers concerned with protecting their property.
Globally there has been year on year growth, with recent climate policies encouraging the use of Bicycles as a means of transport around cities. (Nikitas et al., 2021) Indeed the impact on citizen health is leading modern cities to plan for the 15 minute city (Reid, 2020). This includes several cities in Europe, as policies and infrastructure with cycling lanes improve.
Tthe major of Paris (Anne Hidalgo) unveiled more people-first plans for Paris including that every street in the French capital was to have a cycle path, and for all the city’s bridges to have protected cycleways (Reid, 2020).
During the last two decades, several North American cities have seen an increase in bicycle ridership, which in part can be related to investment in the cycling infrastructure (Pucher, Buehler and Seinen, 2011). With energy and climate change concerns, cycling is seen as one of the most sustainable.
Crime
In the UK, a bicycle is stolen every minute and less than 5% of those are returned to their owners.
The latest International Crime Victim Survey estimates that cyclists are more likely to have their bikes stolen than motorcyclists or car owners their car (Sidebottom et al., 2009, Zhang et al., 2007)
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In Germany bicycle theft represents 19% of the overall “theft offences” second only to shoplifting.
the world.
