Vianova, a French-Swiss startup, built a data platform to help cities and mobility operators collaborate and communicate efficiently. With 12 cities already using the platform, including Basel and Zurich, the startup has obtained fresh capital to expand within Europe and enhance its product.
Vianova (formerly Spark Horizon GmbH) was born in 2018 in Switzerland. In 2019, the company pivoted into a new commercial activity resulting in the formation of Vianova with headquarters in Zurich and Paris. Its data platform collects and processes data from shared mobility operators and provides cities with a mobility management dashboard to supervise the devices on the city territory.
Through the dashboard and API suite, cities access data analytics to understand the usage rate of e-scooters in their region for better planning, regulatory enforcement and verifying operators’ compliance. The platform enables operators to audit their services, receive city policies in a digital and standardised format, and securely share their data with cities for increased transparency.
“We facilitate communication between both parties and ease the integration of these new devices in the city streets network. Cities can finally gain control over what’s going on their territory and build a data-driven mobility management strategy”, said Thibault Castagne, CEO and Co-founder of Vianova. “Vianova technology is based on the innovative mobility data format called Mobility Data Specification. Our Big Data cloud infrastructure ingest and process 100M GPS data points a day”, he further explains.
Basel and Zurich cities among clients
Vianova works with 12 cities across Europe including Basel and Zurich in Switzerland, as well as Helsinki, Stockholm, Paris, and Bruxelles. It has already started a project with Mairie de Paris to analyse the impact of urban logistics on city infrastructure usage and provide better management tools to cities to regulate last-mile deliveries. By the end of 2021, the company aims to extend its reach in Europe by working with 25 additional cities. Among its 25 operators are two public transport operators including VBZ (Zurich), and Europewide it works with Lime, Tier, Bird and Bolt.
Most recently the company expanded into the UK where it began working with the micro-mobility brand Voi and local authorities in the UK on policies and data sharing to support micro-mobility. Vianova’s first UK local authority partner will be going live this year.
Financial boost for European expansion
The startup has secured €1.8 million following the closing of its seed round led by the French-based RATP Capital Innovation and Contrarian Ventures from Lithuania and UK. The funds will allow it to enhance its data platform to make it more scalable and integrate other transport modes such as taxis, ride-hailing, car-sharing and urban logistics. Moreover, the company plans to hire data-scientists and business developers both in Zurich and Paris.
Further milestones
Besides raising capital, Vianova has generated more than half a million francs in revenue in 2020. It was accepted into European accelerator EIT Urban Mobility and the Govtech Accelerator public.io to hasten development in the UK and Germany. Its team comprises 15 employees.
(RAN)
Picture: NikGuy / Pixabay
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