Vianova, a Paris-based urban mobility data startup, has raised €6 million in series A funds, bringing its funding total to €9 million.
The round is led by insurance group Baloise with participation from La Poste Ventures, an open innovation of French postal carrier La Poste that's managed by the Franco-German VC Xange.
Also taking part are two of Vianova's existing investors, namely the Dutch VC Ponooc and RATP Capital Innovation, with the latter investing on behalf of Paris Métro operators RATP Group.
Following the series A raise, new hires are expected across Vianova, supporting further expansion internationally.
Vianova wants to tackle the need for joined up urban mobility systems. Already with 150 cities, operators and enterprise customers, the startup says it's garnering traction with renowned European mobility providers like RATP, Bolt and Voi.
Vianova was founded in 2019 by the French entrepreneurs Thibault Castagne, Thibauld Febvre and Frédéric Robinet.
The cloud-based mobility analytics software extracts data from connected IoT that's increasingly embedded into transit fleets to help build a repository of "geo-intelligence" for mobility stakeholders.
As well as fleet-wide dashboards and matrix-driven analytics, there's also the option of acquiring anonymised shared data from external mobility providers, used to produce both historical and real time insights. Vianova says more than 150+ shared data sources are incorporated through agreements with "leading OEMs, vehicle operators and analytics startups."
Thibault Castagne, Vianova's CEO said: "We started Vianova with the simple idea of bridging the data gap between public authorities (cities) and private transport providers (ride-hailing, shared mobility companies) yet this vision has since grown as we serve more and more use cases and customer segments.
"Today’s funding and the insight our new investors bring will help us continue this growth. It will move us towards our ultimate vision of becoming the most-trusted, multi-sided agnostic data platform, where mobility data producers and mobility data customers meet, collaborate, and trade information to solve their challenges while improving the lives of citizens.”
Municipal authorities have long faced a battle to contain the traditional highway rush at peak times.
Many larger cities began to emphasise multi-modal public transport as a cleaner alternative, to reduce traffic and tackle climate change, though buses and trams share the same roadways as cars.
More recently, the rise of new novel eco-friendly transport modes, like e-scooters and EV ride hailing, has added to the complexity of municipal transit. For example, Vianova's platform enables EV fleets to schedule regular electric battery swaps to minimise downtime. It's also used to track 500,000+ curb side shared mobility devices, like bikeshares and scooter fleets.
To be successful, mobility fleets need to co-ordinate transit data effectively, and where possible co-ordinate with other modes of transport, in order to address safety bottlenecks and promote greener journeys that arrive on time.
This data can also lead to more informed public policy decisions on new public transit arteries. In the private sector, insurers can leverage some of the same connected transit data to underwrite policy coverage with greater accuracy.
The mobility analytics platform by Vianova is said to relay data insights from over 1 million connected vehicles every day. In Brussels, authorities have leveraged the software to formulate policies for specific highway districts. They've also managed to scale back traffic enforcement patrols, due to the availability of better data insights.
In Switzerland the authorities in Zurich deployed the software to integrate IoT feedback from six municipal transit operators. The data is also exported from Vianova's back-end to a consumer smartphone app, VBZ MaaS, offering real-time information.
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