InMotion invests in four mobility and transportation startups
InMotion Ventures, the venture capital business powered by Jaguar Land Rover, has completed seed investments in four exciting mobility and transportation startups.
Early stage businesses By Miles, Dovu, Wluper and Zeelo join the Seed Programme and will spend six months working from InMotion HQ in London.
Founded by James Blackham and Callum Rimmer,By Miles(formerly Just Miles) offers innovative pay-per-mile car insurance with a simple-to-use driving app. Rather than buying a traditional annual car insurance policy, By Miles customers sign up for a fixed monthly subscription and then pay on a flexible, per-journey basis. Transparent, real-time policies give customers more control, with other handy tools available in the By Miles smartphone app.
Dovu is building a global API (Application Programming Interface) marketplace for the transport ecosystem. From connected vehicles to public transport, data will be at the heart of how we get around in the future. Founded by Irfon Watkins (who previously founded successful technology company Coull), Arwen Smit, and Krasina Mileva, Dovu is working closely with the development community to make transport data accessible and easy to use.
Wluper is an intelligent personal assistant for navigation and transportation which allows for easy, intuitive journey planning through a conversational voice or instant messaging interface. Founded by Hami Bahraynian, Maurice von Sturm and Nikolai Rozanov, Wluper utilises natural language processing and machine learning to deliver answers to questions, location-based services and a new class of user experience.
Solving the problem of inconvenient, expensive travel between cities and to and from events like sports matches and festivals,Zeelo‘s ‘pop-up’ coach service usesartificial intelligence to predict demand and identify routes. Zeelo co-founders Sam Ryan and Barney Williams previously founded taxi sharing app JumpIn, which was bought by Addison Lee in 2014.
James Nettleton, Head of Seed Programme at InMotion says, “After more than 200 applications, 50 face-to-face meetings and 30 formal pitches, we’re delighted to have found four fantastic companies to invest in. They’re already doing exciting things, and we can’t wait to help them do even more.”
Sebastian Peck, Managing Director of InMotion, says, “We were impressed with the calibre of startup applying for our programme, and are delighted to add Zeelo, Wluper, Dovu and By Miles to our portfolio. The problems they are solving illustrate the breadth of the mobility sector and show the potential for fantastic businesses to be built in this area.”
These four new investments by InMotion follow soon after a $25m agreement with fast-growing US ride-share business Lyft.
For more on the InMotion Seed Programme, visit inmotionventures.com/seed-programme.
