Veomo — Accelerating the transition to a more connected and sustainable urban mobility
It was an ordinary Tuesday in our co-working space when Dominik Nouri walked in looking to rent a chair to work from for the next 2 months. Little did we know that this Bosnian-born, German-based flip-flop wearing, constantly-smiling, cool bearded guy is the founder and CEO of a mobility start-up called Veomo.
Every month the hub organizes Q&A sessions with a new member or a digital nomad where we get to know them and their story. Dominik immediately caught our attention, and we spoke with him about new mobility trends, his start-up and the differences between Bosnian and German tech ecosystem.
Dominik, we truly loved the presentation of Veomo you gave at the hub and knew right away you were our next über founder story. So, can you present your start-up shortly to our digital audience as well?
Veomo is a tech start-up from Munich that specialises in the development of visualisation software for multimodal mobility data. Founded in 2018, the company is currently the largest data aggregator of multimodal mobility data in Germany. By making mobility data available in a simple and transparent way, the company strives to accelerate the transition to connected and sustainable mobility. Veomo’s multimodal mobility platform has access to over 60 mobility services in the seven largest cities in Germany and Vienna. This data serves as a foundation for the visualization of multimodal departure boards, in-app mobility services, location analyses and mobility concepts.
We believe that the transition to new mobility is essential for livable and sustainable cities.
That is why we have set ourselves the goal of using innovative technologies to create awareness for the connected mobility of tomorrow.
With the aim of influencing mobility behaviour over the long term, Veomo uses intelligent software solutions to create easy access to all mobility information such as local transport, ride-bike-car-sharing services and taxi companies. The transparency created in this way reduces the daily commuting stress, the need for parking spaces and promotes greater awareness of previously unknown transport options.
Share with us where your idea came from?
We at Veomo belong to a generation of young urbanites who have never owned a vehicle. We take advantage of the freedom and flexibility provided by access to different mobility services. That’s why we started asking our family members and work colleagues if they are aware of the new possibilities they have today to experience their individual mobility without having to own a car. Our finding was that many of our fellows do not have a clear picture of their new mobility possibilities. New studies have shown that up to 50% of people living in cities have never heard of sharing mobility service.
We saw a big gap in the awareness of alternatives. Our first move was to create an overview of new mobility services and show them to the respondents. The positive feedback took us one step further. We started contacting providers of mobility services in our home town Munich and told them about our survey. We asked for data access in order to visualize a live overview of all services on a user interface and to display it on monitors at highly frequented locations. We managed to display real-time information from different forms of mobility providers on one easy to understand UI, to make it understandable for commuters and to win with our MVP first corporates as customers.
What has your path looked like so far?
After the product-market fit, we focused on the development of a stable and scalable product that would enable any company to make a positive contribution to the mobility revolution. Within a few months, we integrated all mobility providers in the largest cities in Germany. We currently count more than 45 mobility providers among our partners and offer our services in more than 15 cities in Germany and Austria.
After we were able to offer our services in more and more cities, we had to clearly define our customer segment. Unfortunately, corona hit the mobility industry. Mobility and high-frequency locations hardly existed anymore. This led us to react to the market situation and develop new solutions. Thankfully, we succeeded and were able to get our first investment. Since then, our team has grown to ten full-time employees.
What is the next “big goal” for the company?
We are currently concentrating on sales of our data-based mobility solutions in the German-speaking region. We are also developing our own UIs and UXs for our target groups. The aim is to add more mobility services in Europe to our platform, offer our mobility solutions in more European cities and provide access to our data platform for other providers with data-based business models. Our big goal is to reach break-even.
This is our last question, we promise. And then we’ll leave you to your e-scooter. Can you give us your impression of the BH start-up ecosystem?
The start-up ecosystem in Sarajevo surprised me a lot. So far, I only know of small towns in Bosnia. There I had the feeling that the younger generation had given up. In Sarajevo, I met many talented, courageous and self-confident personalities who are fighting for a better and modern future for the country. I understand that investment capital and state subsidies for groundbreaking ideas are not available in large numbers. Nevertheless, I can only encourage founders to build business models that are internationally viable from the beginning. They certainly have the potential!
Thanks for following Sarajevo.tech.
Every month we showcase new tech start-ups and give voice to inspiring entrepreneurs, founders and ecosystem players. Stay updated by following us for more stories like this one.
