In our third annual Mobility investment program we are lucky to be able to tap into innovative early-stage startups from around the world, each of them with a unique approach to solving the problems of today and positioned to scale up in a world where shared, connected, autonomous and electric mobility is here to stay.
We have moved into Phase II of this year's program and have picked five startups from five different countries, all of them with huge potential in the US market but refining their products and businesses in their capital-efficient home markets like Israel, India, Portugal, Germany and the UK.
Combined with a pre-seed cash investment, these five startups will hit the ground in Chicago on December 2 for an intensive 3-week stay in the US (including New York / New Jersey as well as Detroit) to test their market hypotheses with potential customers, partners and investors in the US.
Connect with us directly if you'd like to meet any of them. They're a great bunch of entrepreneurs that are a great addition to the international Sente Foundry family.
CleanAI
Berlin, Germany
The mobility world is moving to shared vehicles, and in many cases, those shared vehicles take several trips per day or week before a staff member comes to inspect the vehicle interior or to clean it.
CleanAI is tackling that problem, with a computer vision solution to detect dirt, stains, rubbish or left items (and distinguish those objects from the normal objects in a vehicle), saving money and time for fleets and improving the experience of drivers and riders.
IZIRepair
Lisbon, Portugal
Personal vehicles are becoming less "owned" assets and increasingly delivered as "experiences", and IZIRepair is delivering the experience of car maintenance under a single membership plan for pre-owned vehicles.
This removes the burden of worrying about where to have your vehicle serviced, who to trust, and how much to pay for regular maintenance (it's all included in a monthly plan). Plus, with connected vehicles, IZIRepair will be able to deliver insights and discounts based on the anticipated need for service.
CityMaaS
London, UK
Think about the number of people in our cities that have reduced mobility. Not just people in wheelchairs and the elderly - what about families with babies, and travelers with luggage? What about autonomous delivery vehicles? Does our existing digital system for navigation and booking of multimodal transportation serve the needs of these millions of travelers? We don't think so.
CityMaaS uses crowdsourced data and adaptive UX technologies to build a "digital twin" of the urban environment and filtering/routing technologies to address this large and growing opportunity set.
ClearQuote
Bangalore, India
With more shared vehicle usage patterns and more "on-demand" services for our vehicles, there is a growing need for intelligent solutions to understand vehicle condition (both before and after usage). This includes damage inspection for rental cars and carsharing, and also for valet services and various shared fleets who currently do manual inspection today.
ClearQuote uses computer vision to quickly obtain a damage inspection for a vehicle and (where applicable) links to pricing data for repair or replacement, and needs no fixed camera infrastructure to do it (just needs a smartphone!)
Crispify
Herzliya, Israel
People are much more aware of the air quality in cities, and that same air is breathed by commuters in cars every day.
Crispify is focused on the air quality inside a vehicle. With its all-in-one solution of sensors, software and advanced filtration system, it can go from simply monitoring for smoke, cannabis or other particles (and alerting fleet managers when parameters are exceeded) to a full air quality management system for shared or personal mobility.