Swedish bike rental service, Jonna, is considered as one of the most promising startups with solutions for sustainable urban mobility. The Stockholm-based company is one of 13 startups to be part of a Scale-up programme, which aims to be a gateway for participant companies to make themselves known to potential investors, customers, and partners. Jonna is on a quest to make “biking inclusive.” declared Fredrik Karlberg, CEO of the startup.
To help Jonna reach its goal, the startup will benefit from support services worth more than €25,000, given by the programme’s partners. The Scale-up Programme is financed by EIT Urban Mobility and led by CARNET, with the collaboration of PowerHub and several other entities. The support from partners hopes to bolster Jonna’s campaign to get more of its subscription service bikes rolling around streets in Sweden and beyond. If you own “a bike, there are some hassles along the way” Karlberg explained, “you have service then you have risk of theft.”
The startup wants to pull down these barriers by giving customers the chance to rent bikes with a service guarantee. They have the option of paying for a flexible rolling monthly fee or, commit to 6 months at a lower monthly fee. With this, if rides don’t go as planned and a bike gets a puncture or breaks in any way, Jonna “basically (helps) them immediately when something is wrong” the service also has “a theft deductible or a theft protection so there’s basically lower risk of having a bike” said Karlberg.
Jonna will fix the bike for free at one of its repair stores, or a Joanna repairman will go directly to the customer’s door to bring their bikes back to life. Once the customer no longer needs the bike, they can cancel the subscription and leave the two-wheeler at Jonna’s service centre.
The startup wants to pioneer sustainable mobility. Its subscription not only stomps out the need to buy new bicycles, its repair service also extends a bike’s life span, a win-win for the customer and the planet, “it’s simply not sustainable to drive cars to work or drive them as often. We can replace a lot of those trips with bikes and e-bikes(…) for Jonna’s case what we can replace are the trips that are inner city, in the suburbs, the further out you come the harder it is to choose a form of transport and that is where we have our customer base.”
Another Swedish company pushing for sustainable mobility is Waybler, they’re taking over parking lots in Stockholm to convert them into profitable charging spots. Their aim is to allow users to charge electric vehicles in parking areas located in residential buildings or at workplaces, using an AI cloud charging service, a mobile app and a charging box.
The charging stations put the customers first, users can charge their cars at their convenience. Waybler’s unique business model requires a low initial investment but cuts big energy costs, and it’s also easily scalable. “Every single parking lot will become a charging spot and that’s the way the world is going to develop and that’s a key element in making electro mobility available for everybody.” Kurt Högnelid, the CEO of Waybler explained.
In addition to at home and work charging, Waybler has installed charging stations in the streets: “95% of charging will occur when the car is parked, you need a solution for charging in the streets(…) we’ve been trying to figure out a solution for charging in an urban area, we just simply avoid the digging because if you dig up the pavement, you have to restore it, it costs a fortune, it costs like 6 to 7 thousand euros per charging spot, we do it at one third because we don’t do any digging, we put the cable in the curbstone.”
With the help of EIT Urban Mobility, Waybler wants to “become a key player in enabling people to move over to electric cars” said Kurt Högnelid, “EIT Urban Mobility has a very good network, so we are really benefiting from their knowledge (on) what kind of interfaces we need and how to approach the customers.”
Do you want to know more about this innovative startup? Discover more about Jonna and Waybler at the Mobility Innovation Marketplace.
