The Micromobility Bundle from Iomob
Micromobility in one form or another has been around longer than the car. In all its forms micromobility can be privately owned or shared and can broadly include any form of bike, electric kickscooter or motorized bikes and scooters. Horace Dediu, founder of Micromobility Industries, further limits micromobility to a maximum weight of 5 times the huyman payload (e.g. max of 500kg).In the past few years we have seen an absolute explosion of shared micromobility services entering cities around the globe. Some of them have grown at unseen rates for any venture type, let alone mobility and infrastructure.
While the growing diversity of choice for residents and visitors of cities to move around without being in a personal vehicle is exciting. But how on earth are people supposed to navigate the dozens of apps in their own cities let alone the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of mobility apps available in cities they travel to around the world?
The level of fragmentation we are witnessing in cities is obviously not sustainable which is why we will likely see some level of mergers and acquisitions such as the recent acquisition of our partner Circ by Bird.
However, in many cities around the world, we expect due to regulations or local innovation and adaptation, the fragmentation of micromobility will remain.
In Spain for example we have witnessed regulators make some missteps which really challenge the viability of micromobility operators to remain viable businesses. In both Madrid and Barcelona, the two largest cities in Spain, local regulators initiated a license application process for micromobility operators which enabled dozens of operators to obtain licenses but restricted the number of vehicles each one could operate to a point where the fragmented market makes it impossible for visitors and residents to easily discover, book and pay for micromobility services.
Since Iomob was founded a few years ago, we have been on a mission to enable users of any app connected to our back end would be able to travel anywhere in the world where we have mobility services connected and access them through the same app.
Iomob is now hard at work building a global inventory of micromobility operators to a range of clients and large demand partners including Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and to our clients within our intermodal Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platform we offer to public and private enterprise transportation organizations. Circ was the first operator who agreed to enable Iomob to support deep integration of their kickscooter services into our backend, which was first exposed to Renfe customers in Spain a few months ago.
Users of apps connected to our back end will soon be able to to access a wide range of micromobility operators wherever they travel without having to discover, download and onboard (profile and credit card info) for each new micromobility service.
Not only does this drastically improve the experience for micromobility users but is also of big benefit to the micromobility operators who will be able to optimize their fleet utilisation, and therefore improve their unit economics by gaining low-cost (virtually free) access to new users who may otherwise not have discovered or onboarded their own app.
However, our Micromobility Bundle service offers another substantial benefit to micromobility operators. If they so choose, operators can include access to Iomob’s inventory of micromobility operators via an SDK embedded into their own app. Take for example Tier. They aspire to be the pan-European leader of micromobility, in particular, shared electric kickscooters. Instead of trying to achieve world domination, Tier has opted to focus on trying to the best in their region. If Tier were to not just be a supply parnter but also to integrate a link to our bundle, they could allow their loyal customers to travel the whole world and access micromobility services in other parters of the world where Tier has chosen not to operate, such as Asia or the Americas.
You may ask why would Tier opt in? First of all, it can support customer loyalty and stickiness of their app, if a customer knows she can access micromobility services anywhere in the world with the same app the use daily in their home territory. Secondly, Tier can obtain a small commission on trips booked through their app on other micromobility services, allowing them to monetize mobility in markets they don’t even service directly.
In conclusion, we at Iomob are bullish on the future of micromobility as a critical part of supporting our transition away from passenger vehicle dependence and towardrs access to more sustainable intermodal mobility experiences. We also believe there will not be one or two or even three oligopolistic operators. There are too many regional and even local variations in user behaviour, infrastructure, regulatory environments and types of micromobility services that will be preferred to assume the space can be dominated by a few players. We embrace this diversity of choice for users and for operators to find their own strategies, and want to support their fleet optimization while allowing users to roam the world accessing the global micromobility ecosystem without the hassle of discovering, downloading and onboarding multiple apps. Diversity of mobility services is great but we must make navigating them seamless for the benefit of users and mobility innovators alike.
ABOUT IOMOB
Iomob, which stands for the Internet of Mobility, headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, has built a white label Mobility as a Service solution which combines proprietary algorithms enabling multimodal combinations of public and private services and an SDK that allows end users to discover mobility services, receive multimodal combinations for their journeys, book and pay for a range of mobility services via our client’s own apps. Iomob has won numerous open innovation challenge awards from organisations like Ford Motors, Renfe and Sweden’s Sustainable Mobility Challenge. Iomob has also participated in prestigious startup accelerators such as Techstars and Wayra and in 2020 won the TravelTech Europe startup first prize (London), 2019 Best Mobility Startup of 2019 at the South Summit, The Public Choice Award from ERTICO in 2019, Top Mobility Startup in the Federation of International Automobiles (FiA) Startup Challenge and selected Top 100 Smart Cities Partners by Newsweek.
Learn more about Iomob by connecting with us:
