Does your startup develop products, services or solutions related to urban mobility?   Check our call openings for Accelerator programme batch#3 and ScaleTHENGlobal programmes 2021 and apply now!

EIT Urban Mobility opens two calls on 06/04/2021:   Accelerator batch#3 (July-December) will take place in the five Innovation Hubs (South, Central, North, East and West) with 25 startups in total. ScaleTHENGlobal (June-December) is a pan-European programme that will support 25 startups.  

Accelerator batch#3 is a programme tailored for early stage startups conducted by Business Creation and our project partners in five different Innovation Hubs:   South (Barcelona Activa, city of Barcelona, CARNET, CTAG, UPC, and UPF) Central (ENEA, TUM, UnternehmerTUM, ISBAK, PoliHub) North (Aalto University, Aalto Startup Centre, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Kaunas University of Technology  and cities of Helsinki and Stockholm) East (Zone Cluster, PowerHUB and SpinLab) and West (AMS Institute, Brainport Development, Eindhoven University of Technology, and cities of Amsterdam and Eindhoven). Accelerator programme batch#3 call will close on 09/05/2021

Learn more about the Accelerator programme

ScaleTHENGlobal targets companies with solutions placed at TRL 7 – 9 with demonstrable business traction. The EIT Urban Mobility Business Creation supports the partners running the programme are CARNET, PowerHub, UnternehmerTUM, Digital Hub Logistics, Fraunhofer, the NFF and city of Hamburg. ScaleTHENGlobal call will close on 02/05/2021

Learn more about the ScaleTHENGlobal programme

Urban Mobility has gone through unexpected and momentous changes in 2020. COVID-19 ripped through our nations and cities bringing individual, community and societal upheaval and turmoil. Density and proximity, the very two things that make our cities the economic, cultural, intellectual, political, and innovative beating hearts of our society, were also the weakest points when faced with a new and deadly threat.

Wise medical advice led to lockdowns that inevitably saved millions of lives while freezing personal mobility. Who we are today, how we relate to each other, and how we perceive and move around our cities has changed. Maybe forever.  EIT Urban Mobility was privileged to play a small role in Covid Response Initiatives. Inclusive logistics projects protecting the elderly and vulnerable were rolled out in Budapest touching thousands. New ruggedised rickshaws were designed for handicapped and reduced mobility passenger in the hilly cities of Bergamo and Bilbao. As road space was taken back for public space, citizens in 5 cities were able to design and manufacture their street furniture for their own public spaces.  New nanotech sprays covered the surfaces of our buses and metros, to ensure we got home safely.  

It has been an unforgettable year that has shaped our thinking on where EIT Urban Mobility needs to go. We learned we could move fast and innovate at pace. We learned that the right thinkers and doers are there – you just need to find them. We learned that innovation can be financially beneficial and contribute to sustainable growth. 

In 2021, we launch a call for the Business Creation Programme 2022 focused on our City Challenge Areas. This year we will focus on five simple areas: Active Mobility. Sustainable Logistics, Energy and Mobility,  Future Mobility and Creating Public Realm.  We expect great things from our own EIT Urban Mobility community and hubs. Moreover, having seen how our community responded to COVID with rapid, agile, and impactful projects – we expect more. Higher. Faster. Better. And as the saying goes “Don’t tell me how it cannot be done. Tell me how it can”. 

We look forward to receiving your applications for inclusion in the Business Plan 2022 – 2024. 

Main features of the call (aim and segments) 

The overall purpose of the Business Creation programme is to resolve challenges facing European cities to improve citizens lives, by taking innovative ideas and putting them to the test in real life. 

The Business Creation programmes helps entrepreneurs grow their successful business ventures. It does so by providing a new-business-friendly environment, offering start-ups and scaleups training, advice, funding and opportunities for networking. 

For the Business Plan 2022, Business Creation specifically looks for actions to continue and improve content, formats and business models of the Accelerator Programmes and SME Hub.  The Business Creation call in 2022 is focusing on two areas that reflect the different stages of maturity and needs of startups and SMEs: Acceleration and the SME Hub.  

Call summary 

First Call for Proposals for Business Creation for BP 2022 – 2024: Main Features 

Dates	Call opening: 19 March 2021  Call closing: 18 May 2021  Eligibility and admissibility check: End of May 2021  Evaluation of proposals: June 2021  Communication of results: beginning of July 2021
Budget allocation	Up to 2.1 million EUR
Link to submission portal	PLAZA platform – OPEN NOW!
List of documents to be submitted	Application form available on the PLAZA platform
List of documents to take into consideration	Business Plan 2022 – 2024 first call for proposals for Business Creation  EIT Urban Mobility Strategic Agenda 2021-2027 (available from1mid April 2021 on EIT Urban Mobility website)  Call Guidelines for applicants (link below)  Appeal Procedure (link below) Eligibility of expenditures (link below) List of KPIs (link below) Monitoring and reporting (link below) Frequently Asked Questions – First Calls for BP2022-2024 (link below) Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement
Short summary of the topics to be addressed	Accelerator Programmes  Accelerator Programmes provide support for innovative mobility solutions by nurturing start-ups. There are two programme intakes per year. These include participation in Living Labs and business coaching as well as urban-mobility-specific expertise such as technology or market validation, product-market fit or market entry.   SME Hub Programme The SME Hub Programme provides support for innovative mobility solutions by boosting growth of innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Programme participants will be exposed to city pilots and international networking opportunities.
Evaluation criteria	For the Strategic Fit Evaluation: Contribution to the challenges and target defined in the EIT UM Strategic Agenda and EIT Core KPIs. Fitting with BP 2022 Call Area and Topic under which the programme proposal has been submitted. Addressing the concept of Knowledge Triangle Integration.  For the Full proposal evaluation:  Excellence, thought leadership and results-focus.  Impact and financial sustainability.  Quality and efficiency of the implementation, including sound financial management.

Find all the information about this call below!

Supporting documents:

Contact details 

Type of contact	Email
General	call2022@eiturbanmobility.eu
Specific for Business Creation	businesscreationcall2022@eiturbanmobility.eu

Events-Webinars 

You can find the calendar on the main events here.

We are happy to announce that we reached a significant milestone by improving the integration of shared mobility services in the city of Milan thanks to the platform created by the startup Vianova.

EIT Urban Mobility supported the implementation of this platform to help Milan’s streets to be safer and more efficient. This is a good example of how EIT Urban Mobility contributes to making urban spaces more liveable for the benefit of European citizens.

The EIT Urban Mobility’s business acceleration services enabled Vianova to strengthen its connection with AMAT, a mobility and environment agency owned by the municipality of Milan, and to investigate the possibility to pilot the Vianova technology in Milan. In October 2020, EIT Urban Mobility invested € 45.000 in Vianova to implement a pilot in Milan together with AMAT.

The data platform developed by Vianova consists of a digital layer between cities and connected transportation services, enabling better integration and collaboration between the two. It will now be fully scaled to supervise shared mobility services in Milan, such as e-scooters, bikes, mopeds and shared cars. While doing this, Vianova will also provide digitisation of all regulations of AMAT and it will work on the development of an audit feature to verify operators’ compliance.

The pilot has already kicked-off and it will run throughout 2021, including the platform customisation to the needs of the city of Milan and the integration with the city’s shared mobility operators.  

‘’Thanks to the collaboration with Vianova, the city of Milan will be able to equip itself with a useful tool to better monitor the demand for shared mobility and plan specific interventions to ramp up the mobility offer with new services. This will allow to achieve the goals of EIT Urban Mobility to integrate user-centric mobility services and products and give a significant boost to the market growth’’, stated Valentino Sevino, Director of Mobility Planing and Monitoring Area at AMAT.

BACKGROUND

About Vianova

Vianova, a French start-up based in Paris and founded in 2018, is one of the leading European data platform providers for enabling cities to manage connected, shared and autonomous mobility in the urban public realm. Some facts: 15 major European cities are using Vianova; 25 mobility operators integrated; € 500 000 revenue generated in 2020; 70 000 vehicles supervised/day; 2M rides/month; 100M data points ingested/day.

Vianova has been part of several of programmes supported by EIT Urban Mobility: it was granted with € 15 000 for technology and market validation under the EIT Urban Mobility Accelerator programme running from July to December 2020, followed by its participation in the GoGlobal programme, which promotes start-ups’ global outreach by connecting start-ups to the EIT Urban Mobility network and ecosystem. 

About AMAT

AMAT (Agenzia Mobilità Ambiente e Territorio) is a wholly owned agency by the Municipality of Milan that focuses on mobility, environment and territory. Since 2000, AMAT has been providing services in support of municipal functions in the fields of planning, programming, design, management, monitoring and control related to the mobility, transport and public space activities in the City of Milan.

Contacts / useful links:

www.vianova.io; Thibault Castagne, co-founder of Vianova: thibault.castagne@vianova.io 

www.amat-mi.it; Valentino Sevino, Director of Mobility Planning and Monitoring Area Director at AMAT: valentino.sevino@amat-mi.it

The second batch of EIT Urban Mobility´s Accelerator programme for mobility start-ups coming from all over Europe started with a virtual kick-off organised by our partner Czech PowerHUB.

Core partners of EIT Urban Mobility Innovation Hub East  – PowerHUB, SPINLAB, and ZONE cluster will support five selected startups and will take care of their future business development in the upcoming six months.

• BringAuto from the Czech Republic is a last-mile delivery robotic platform that allows for cargo transportation, eventually can be equipped with various forms of a superstructure.
• MET3R (Zencharge) from Hungary aggregates and dispatches flexible EV storage for the fleet-operators and energy companies.
• Dashfactory from Germany develops and markets safety products for individual mobility, starting with the bicycle market – Dashbike is the first dashcam for cyclists.
• FSE from Poland is the innovative provider of electric light commercial vehicle solutions.
• QLX  (Smarttrass) from Germany is developing a new type of infrastructure design software with nD parametric structure modeling, real-time visualization, and evaluation for earlier and better decisions, and a whole new experience of involving people.

In this second round of the Accelerator programme, each startup has different goals and expectations and therefore their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are specifically identified based on their solution, needs, and plans at the beginning of the programme. All teams will be guided by an experienced lead mentor who will be helping them with a variety of technical and business questions. Additionally, a series of Expert Sessions will provide the teams with specific know-how, such as Customer-Centric Approach, Sales and Marketing.

One of the strong motivation factors is also the € 15.000 in equity-free financing, that will be granted to successful Accelerator teams.

The first batch of the Accelerator programme in the Innovation Hub East in 2020 noticed great success amongst the supported startups, for example, Czech start-up TrackingForm08  – technology to monitor the status of transport infrastructure (roads & rails) using vehicle movement – managed to launch a pilot in Kladno and Prague.

The virtual event “El mundo que viene: La movilidad del futuro”, organised BStartup de Banco Sabadell y Startup Valencia, will take place on the 19 January 2021 at 16:00 CET.

Matteo Consonni, Business Creation Manager at EIT Urban Mobility, will moderate a session with other high level panelists and experts in the sector:

• Pep Gómez, CEO y founder de Reby 
• Mar Alarcón CEO y founder de SocialCar
• Juan Bueno, CEO y founder de Myrentgo Mobility y asesor estratégico de movilidad de Cities Forum
• Ignacio Boneu,  European Marketing Manager de Ford Smart Mobility

During this session we will cover important topics, such as:

• How public administration can support startups and innovation
• The importance of regulation
• Megatrends in urban mobility
• The impact of covid in city mobility
• The interaction between startups and corporates and between public and private sectors to foster innovation in urban mobility

Learn more about this event and register now!

Mobility in urban environments is changing rapidly. By simplifying access to mobility information, Veomo wants to provide cities and businesses with a solution that makes it easier for people to access new forms of mobility.

Over the past decades, the industry has ramped up production facilities and managed to make vehicles affordable and accessible to everyone. The resulting individual transport has changed our understanding of mobility and the appearance of the city.

For many, traffic jams, bad air and lack of living space have become the norm. However, this development is slowly coming to an end and needs to be changed. A new awareness of sharing, usage and sustainability and new digital technologies have enabled new mobility services to be introduced to the market. The multitude of new services is making it difficult for many to switch to shared and sustainable mobility. The availability and business areas are often only found in the app or on the website of the respective provider.

“This makes it difficult to compare different services. Furthermore, there are many potential users who have not yet dealt with new mobility services and who follow their daily commuting routine”, says Dominik Radic, CEO of Veomo.

The above is the rationale for the foundation of Veomo. Its founders are convinced that the transition to new mobility is essential for liveable and sustainable cities.

Their software Veomo informs about the availability of mobility in real time on large monitors at high frequent places. Veomo visualises the full transparency of the new mobility, such as departure times of the public transport, distances to car – bike – scooter sharing, waiting times for ride-hailing, car-pooling, real time traffic information, company shuttles and more – all at a glance.

In order for them to succeed in transforming mobility, they need to reach the broad masses. Their information platform is made for the people. Regardless of age and digital understanding – everyone can find out about the wide variety of mobility in their environment without access to smartphones and/or the Internet.

Mobility involves different and changing needs. That is why “Veomo believes that understanding the end user’s needs is crucial for success and failure. To accelerate the transition to the new mobility and build a successful business, we need quick and easy solutions for our customers. For us, venture means being able to quickly and easily test a product idea in the market, while keeping an eye on scalability. Therefore we follow the Lean Start Up approach with our software solution“, says Radic.

Veomo successfully applied to the EIT Urban Mobility Scale Up Hub and were accepted into the programme. Together, we are working on a solution for the EIT Challenge 5 – Data exploitation. In addition, and we are delighted of presenting them as our Venture nominee for the the EIT Awards.

We are crossing our fingers for you, Veomo!

The GoGlobal programme, developed by the EIT Urban Mobility and coordinated by PowerHUB and CARNET (an initiative by CIT UPC), contributes to enabling a growth environment for mature start-ups with a thematic focus on urban mobility. Within this programme, two different calls are opening for participants: Welcome2Europe and Matchmaking Tour.

Welcome2Europe will host online international start-up companies targeting Europe, giving them the opportunity to be introduced to investors and local hub partners. On the other hand, the Matchmaking Tour programme offers outreach assisting European start-ups looking for expanding their activities across Europe. 

Depending on your geographical area, you are welcome to apply to your specific call, Welcome2Europe or Matchmaking Tour.

Benefits from participating start-ups

These two packages will foster engagement between start-ups, small and medium-size enterprises, original equipment manufacturers and suppliers. Moreover, start-ups and cities will be able to efficiently communicate in a way that meets the expectations from different European regions to which they will be exposed. One week before the main event, preparation workshops will facilitate the selected teams to boost their future presentations and network with potential customers.

The participation in these GoGlobal activities will also grant start-ups to access this year’s digital edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) in Barcelona, named Smart City Live 2020.

Calendar (preliminary – details to come)

Start-ups mentoring

10 November   

• 1st Welcome2Europe/Matchmaking Tour training session
•  Presentation & communication skills                     

12 November   

• 2nd Welcome2Europe/Matchmaking Tour mentoring session
• Strategic communication and fundraising for start-ups.

Main event

17 November : Day 1 – Business opportunities in Central and West regions

Masterclass

• Speed-dating with Potential Costumers
• Speed-dating with Investors

19 November    Day 2 – Business opportunities in North and East regions

Masterclass

• Speed-dating with Potential Costumers
• Speed-dating with Investors

20 November    Day 3 – Business opportunities in South regions

Masterclass

• Speed-dating with Potential Costumers
• Speed-dating with Investors       

Please note that this calendar may change according to necessities – Detailed information will be on the www.urbanmobilityevents.com

Applications to Welcome2Europe for Start-ups from outside Europe HERE

Applications to Matchmaking Tour for Start-ups from within Europe HERE

Urban Radar, Nüwiel, and eParkomat have been selected as the winning participants from the Scale-up Hub programme that will receive up to 50.000€ in equity funding for implementing their pilot’s proposal to the City Club Challenges in the  European cities of Barcelona, Hamburg, and Ostrava, respectively.

Urban Radar, founded in France in 2018, is a cloud platform that revolutionises the way cities manage and regulate their mobility in response to the disrupting urban logistics demand. Their proposal is a pilot project to improve urban logistics by providing the pilot city, Barcelona, a custom-made platform for kerb management and logistics optimization.

For the city of Hamburg, the start-up selected is Nüwiel. Founded in 2016 in the same city where it will test their project, it provides innovative electric bike trailers, which offer a sustainable and reliable solution for transporting goods in urban areas.

Finally, the scale-up testing their pilot project in the city of Ostrava: eParkomat. Founded in Karvina in 2016, they help cities solve the parking problem by using AI & anonymized data of mobile operators, delivering real-time parking occupancy, as well as an analysis based on tracking of driver’s habits. They will implement their platform with the aim of helping drivers navigate directly to the location with highest probability of available parking and managing prices according to the real demand.

Their innovative approach to urban mobility has allowed them to be perceived as the most valuable projects for our cities. By the end of this year, we will be able to obtain their analyses and learn from this experience, that will have a positive impact on the citizens of these cities and, hopefully, a lot more in the coming years.

The Scale-up Hub programme is developed by the EIT Urban Mobility, an innovation community bringing together academia, research, businesses, and cities to work on innovative solutions for the mobility challenges facing cities. EIT Urban Mobility is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), acts to accelerate positive change on mobility to make urban spaces more liveable.

To address the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic EIT Urban Mobility has launched the “EIT Urban Mobility Accelerator programme SPECIAL: COVID-19” to support startups developing mobility solutions for COVID-19 related problems. 

From a pool of over 100 applicants, 23 startups have been selected for the programme, which hail from Spain to Sweden and all the way from Ireland to Israel. For the next three months they will receive a tailored programme including one-on-one coaching, mentoring, peer-to-peer learning, training, workshops, access to international startup and mobility events, and unique access to transport providers, cities and investors. The participating ventures will also profit from a specifically designed COVID-19 impact assessment, which is headed by Dr. Ursula Mühle, who is currently helping the German government to manage the effects of the Corona pandemic. 

The EIT Urban Mobility Accelerator programme SPECIAL: COVID-19 has kicked off successfully on 3 September 2020, and partners are excited to accelerate these 23 promising startups and scale-ups culminating with the final presentation at UnternehmerTUM’s ultimate demo day at the end of November. The programme is co-run by four European acceleration partners: Futurebox (DK), PoliHub (IT), Technion DRIVE Accelerator (ISR), and UnternehmerTUM (DE). 

Introduction to the selected startups:  

AxilionSmartMobility: “Reduce Traffic Congestion & Carbon Footprint with Disruptive AI & SaaS based Technology.”  

BlinkIn: “BlinkIn enables people to be there without going there.” 

CitySwift: “SwiftConnect provides passengers with predicted public transport vehicle demand and capacity information, allowing passengers to plan their journeys.” 

Dashfactory GmbH: “Dashbike is the first valid dashcam for cyclists that also has a StVZO conformal daytime running light and collects infrastructure data.” 

Elonroad AB: “Elonroad develops a high-tech electric road system – it auto charges all types of electric vehicles when parked as well as when driving.” 

European Health Group: “Our coating service prevents bacterial growth on highly used surfaces & all materials, killing viruses & bacteria & making our environment safer.”  

Hawa Dawa: “Digital tools to de-risk pollution + guide healthy routing choices among respiratory vulnerable groups using AI & datascience, IoT + satellite imagery” 

Isarsoft: “We make every camera count – Accurate video analytics solution for your business”  

Keyless Technologies: “Nothing to remember. Nothing to steal. You are the key.”  

Meep: “Meep creates mobile applications that integrate all available transport to and encourage a modal shift towards more sustainable and connected cities.” 

MOTIONTAG: “MOTIONTAG fuels innovation in the mobility sector to solve the climate challenge” 

MUV B Corp: “MUV turns safe & sustainable mobility into a Sport. It rewards responsible habits, certifies CO2 savings and helps Organizations to improve the World” 

Nemi “Flexibilizing public transport to make it more efficient, sustainable and inclusive”. 

Nielsen Concept: “Service B2B of electric bikes and connected bike shelters, 100% green with the concept of circular economy”  

The mission of Nielsen Concept is to improve the practice of individual and collective electric mobility and above all warn of the increase in carbon emissions 

NÜWIEL GmbH: “eTrailer is the first electric trailer for bikes with patented technology that enabling smart synchronized movement”  

Odo: “Sustainable and smart first/last mile solution that collects data about the city”  

PentaLock: “The ultimate bike security system inside the crank to prevent thefts” 

RideBee: “The default platform for your daily commute.RideBee is developing a platform for companies that supports the formation of carpools for employees and simplifies their daily organization.” 

Roll2Go: “The data-centric platform for mobility data fusion and predictive analytics”  

Saanize: “We develop simple solutions to the challenges our users meet every day”  

Scan Unic: “Our innovative research and design network develops all our technologies from concept to prototype stage.” 

UrbanRadar: “Mobility data analytics to beat congestion and improve air quality”  

VONZU Tech: “Empowering digitalization in the urban distribution of goods”  

Twenty three startups submitted their information to be evaluated. All participating startups had to submit a pitch deck and answer a set of questions focused on the viability of their business model, scalability and other important factors. All of these attributes were then examined individually by the evaluators who gave the startups a total score. Based on this score, the selected startups are:

• EVIO – Electrical Mobility
• Huddl Mobility Limited t/a CitySwift
• Meep
• Vianova
• Volvero

The Next Steps

These five startups, as those that were not selected, will now be able to attend the six preparation investment sessions. These sessions will put the emphasis on the expansion to foreign markets such as the US, as well as other important business sectors. Learn more about them here.

Each session will have a speaker with expertise on fields related to startup scalability and growth.

Power4Global and GoGlobal

Power4Global is an integral part of the GoGlobal programme, itself part of the larger Business Creation programme by EIT Urban Mobility. It is focused on aiding urban mobility startups in their expansion outside of Europe, particularly in the United States. This programme would have concluded in the selected startups visiting Silicon Valley, particularly, San Diego. Due to COVID-19 limitations, though, the event will take place virtually.

The GoGlobal programme is organised by a multidisciplinary, international consortium comprised of CARNET and PowerHUB.