UK-based innovation accelerator, Wayra, selects iomob out of 25 finalists to be part of its Intelligent Mobility Accelerator Programme for 2018.
Wayra UK is an entrepreneurship and innovation-focused accelerator that helps to identify, develop, promote and scale UK-based startups. It is funded and founded by Teléfonica, as part of Teléfonica Open Future — a global corporate accelerators network with hubs spread across Europe and South America.
Wayra’s emphasis on partnerships means that they openly collaborate with enterprises who share their vision that innovation can only happen through cooperation and sharing. They therefore look to partner with companies for whom corporate acceleration is not the end goal: their focus is ultimately about solving society’s most pressing issues.
Wayra’s Intelligent Mobility (IM) Accelerator, a partnership between Transport Systems Catapult and Wayra UK, exemplifies their issue-solving attitude.
As well as being designed to attract disruptive startups with high-growth potential into the UK transport supply chain, while simultaneously helping them grow into world-leading companies, the accelerator also hopes to develop companies that can solve some of mobility’s most urgent challenges. For clarity: Intelligent Mobility can loosely be defined as mobility solutions that use emerging technologies to stimulate and facilitate more sustainable, efficient and ‘smarter’ flows of people, animals and goods around the world, and in particular around cities.
It covers a range of technologies and concepts — from autonomous vehicles, to wireless transport monitoring, to blockchain MaaS (iomob’s specialty). The Intelligent Mobility Accelerator is supported by a number of big UK and international national mobility players — from global technology consultancy ThoughtWorks and national railway infrastructure operator Network Rail, to Telefónica Smart Steps — Telefónica’s specialist department for tackling how data can be used to help cities take a smarter approach to population flows and movement.
Based in Milton Keynes, the competition’s prize — its accelerator programme — welcomes two separate cohorts of six companies each year.
It is the first programme of its kind in the UK to cover the full range of areas related to Intelligent Mobility and its vision is to develop companies who will be at the forefront of creating data-driven solutions for the most pressing transport problems facing the world today. Through this, Wayra hope that their mobility accelerator will improve the day-to-day lives of millions of commuters worldwide, at the same time as creating new UK-based industry pioneers who will lead the £900bn global transport systems market into the future.
iomob, a Mobility-as-a-Service start-up that combines open source and blockchain technology in order to decentralize mobility, was selected for the programme. iomob will take part in a six-month support programme, with access to office space, mentoring and networking. They will also be able to take full advantage of Wayra’s partner networks of investors, government agencies, customers, large corporates and universities, as well as capitalise on opportunities to work with the TSC’s world-leading Data, Visualisation, Customer Experience and Connected and Autonomous Vehicle capability teams.
Through taking part in Wayra’s Intelligent Mobility Accelerator programme, iomob hopes to accelerate business development activity in the UK, and potentially in Spain, home to iomob’s founders, given Wayra’s base with Telefonica is in Madrid.
Working together, iomob, Wayra, and the accelerator’s network of partners and contacts will workshop new and exciting ways to drive the development and adoption of intelligent mobility solutions in cities worldwide. iomob’s CEO Boyd Cohen said:
“It is a real honor and privilege to have made it through the rigorous selection process and to have been selected amongst so many global mobility startups, to spend six months in the prestigious Intelligent Mobility Accelerator. While we are excited for the program to start today, we also recognize that the work is just beginning and, as a team, we must commit time and resources to optimize the impact on iomob’s trajectory in the UK and beyond.”
A range of team members and iomob collaborators will also contribute throughout the six month period. Josep Sanjuas, iomob CTO, will represent iomob in this week’s kickoff activities while CEO, Boyd Cohen, Ph.D. CEO IoMob continues his Asia Pacific tour. Next week, Senior Operations Manager, Boris Lunoff will represent iomob at Wayra, meanwhile towards the end of the month, Boyd will join Mark Povey, Centrality co-founder and a lead contributor to the Senta Mobility joint venture in a special collaborative event in the UK as well.
