Anyone who thinks of Deutsche Bahn does not necessarily expect a press release from Berlin, San Francisco and New York at the same time. But exactly such a message flutters on my desk this weekend.
Through its subsidiary DB Digital Ventures, Deutsche Bahn is participating in the two US start-ups Ridecell and GoKid. With these two investments, the Group is expanding its know-how in the area of shared mobility and sees new opportunities and synergy potential for the further development of its own offerings in this growth segment.
DB Digital Ventures, with which Deutsche Bahn promotes new digital business models, is investing in two young US companies. With Ridecell and GoKid, DB is relying on innovative technologies and two offers that complement the core business of rail and could play a decisive role in the mobility market in the future.
DB Digital Ventures, with which Deutsche Bahn promotes new digital business models, is investing in two young US companies. With Ridecell and GoKid, it is relying on innovative technologies and two offers that complement the core business of rail and could play a decisive role in the mobility market in the future.
These two investments complement the portfolio of international investments such as what3words or connected signals.
Promoting innovative and disruptive business models
“Today we are bringing startups on board in order to expand our technological competence and develop networked, tailor-made offers for our customers in the mobility 4.0 era”, Prof. Sabina Jeschke, DB Board Member for Digitisation and Technology, is quoted. DB Digital Ventures is providing around 100 million euros in venture capital for cooperation with start-ups until 2019. The aim is to promote innovative and disruptive business models in mobility and logistics. The customers of Deutsche Bahn should benefit from this in the long term.
GoKid brings children safely to school
The New York startup GoKid makes life easier for parents. The company operates a platform for car-pooling that takes children safely and punctually to school, sports or other leisure activities. GoKid has already organized more than 100,000 trips, primarily in the USA. Parents save time and money and protect the environment because journeys are shared and bundled. “With our car pools for school children, we want to support DB’s commitment to new forms of mobility,” explains Dr. Stefanie Lemcke, CEO GoKid.
Ridecell is the world’s leading provider of car sharing and ride sharing platforms and for controlling autonomous fleets.
Founded in 2009 and based in San Francisco, Ridecell has developed intelligent software for car sharing, carpooling and autonomous fleet management. Over 20 million trips have already been arranged via the Ridecell platform. “With our end-to-end integration, mobility companies and cities can quickly introduce their own car and ride sharing services to the market, expand them and increase their utilisation,” says Aarjav Trivedi, CEO Ridecell.
“Over 20 million rides have already been arranged via the Ridecell platform.”
Deutsche Bahn sees the potential in this investment to offer all forms of use for vehicle fleets in one platform – car sharing, ride sharing and on-demand offers, including autonomous vehicles. Finally, Deutsche Bahn already operates two dedicated offers with ioki and Clevershuttle with ride sharing and pooling offers.
With these two international investments, there can be no doubt that Deutsche Bahn shows how important the expansion of modern mobility offers is to it. The decisive factor here will be how quickly the German subsidiaries can learn from the digital solutions from the USA and how quickly their solutions can be delivered to the German rail customer.
Read more in the category “Innovation”:
Post a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.