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Via is a company that provides public mobility solutions through its dynamic digitalized networks. The company develops on-demand and pre-scheduled transit systems with a focus on building the future transportation systems. This innovative move of the company helps in reducing various social problems such as traffic congestion and carbon emission. Let’s have a look at the company’s growth, strategies, and attainments.
Via – Company Highlights
- Startup Name-Via
- Sector-Transportation
- Headquarters-New York
- Founded-2012
- Founder-Daniel Ramot, Oren Shoval
- Parent Organization-Via Transportation Inc.
- Website-www.ridewithvia.com
- contact-info@ridewithvia.com
Via – About
Via is a re-engineering public transit company that focuses on transforming transportation systems into dynamic networks. The company operates in cities, private operators, school districts, universities, and corporations. The facilities include first/last mile, school bus, non-emergency medical solutions. It exhibits eco-friendly travel solutions such as less operational costs, reduced traffic, and carbon emissions.
Via – Founders and Team
Daniel Ramot
Via was founded in the year 2012 by Daniel Ramot and Oren Shoval. Daniel Ramot is the CEO of the company. He did his Ph.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine. He was working as an Engineering and Product Manager at Israeli Air Force and was also the Director of D.E.Shaw Research. Oren Shoval is the other Co-founder and CTO of Via. He was a former strategy business consultant at McKinsey and has spent 10 years in the Israeli Air Force. The company currently has more than 700 employees.
Via – Vision and Mission
The vision and mission of the company is to build a revolutionary technology that will change the transportation system in a more beneficial way for the people.
Via – How Was Via Started?
When the company first launched, there was little interest from cities in the software platform. The company started by focusing on its consumer-facing shuttles. Over time, and using the massive amounts of data it collected through these services, Via improved its dynamic, on-demand routing algorithm, which uses real-time data to route shuttles to where they’re needed most.
Via landed its first city partnership with Austin in late 2017, after providing the platform to the transit authority for free. It was enough to allow Via to develop case studies and convince other cities to buy into the service. In 2019, the partnerships side of the business “took off,” Ramot said in a recent interview, adding that the company signed on two to three cities a week before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Via platform is used by more than 100 partners, including cities such as Los Angeles and Cupertino, Calif., and Arriva Bus UK, a Deutsche Bahn company that uses it for a first and last-mile service connecting commuters to a high-speed train station in Kent, U.K.
Via – Business Model and Revenue Model
The company uses the generic ride-sharing model, which is a B2C business model as other transit startups. The service is to connect riders with drivers. The company charges according to the transit accompanied.
Via – Funding and Investors
Via has raised a total of $587.1M through five different funding rounds. The Series E funding round, which included other investors, totaled $400M, according to a source familiar with the deal. Exor invested $200M into Via as part of the round.
Via employs about 700 people, planed to use most of these funds to expand its “partnerships,” the software services piece of its business. Via has two sides to its business. The company operates consumer-facing shuttles in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and New York. But the core of its business is really its underlying software platform, which it sells to cities and transportation authorities to deploy their own shuttles.
Via – Competitors
The leading competitors of Via are Uber, Lyft, Gett, Zimride, Scoop, Getaround and Waze.
Uber Technologies, Inc., commonly known as Uber, offers vehicles for hire, food delivery, package delivery, couriers, freight transportation, and, through a partnership with Lime, electric bicycle and motorized scooter rental.
Lyft, Inc. develops, markets, and operates a mobile app, offering vehicles for hire, motorized scooters, a bicycle-sharing system, and food delivery. The company is based in San Francisco, California and operates in 644 cities in the United States and 12 cities in Canada.
Gett, previously known as GetTaxi, is an Israeli on-demand mobility company that connects customers with transportation, goods and services. Customers can order a taxi or courier either through the company's website or the company's GPS-based smartphone app.
Zimride by Enterprise Holdings is an American carpool program that matches inter-city drivers and passengers through social networking services. It is offered to universities and businesses as a matchmaking service.
Getaround is an online car sharing or peer-to-peer carsharing service that allows drivers to rent cars from private car owners, and owners to rent out their cars for payment. As of 2019, the company was reported to have five million users and approximately 20,000 connected cars worldwide.
Waze is a GPS navigation software app owned by Google. It works on smartphones and tablet computers that have GPS support. It provides turn-by-turn navigation information and user-submitted travel times and route details, while downloading location-dependent information over a mobile telephone network.
Via – Growth and Revenue
The company operates in 20+ countries with 70+ Million rides and 90+ Transit partners. The estimated annual revenue of the company is around $225M.
Via – Acquisitions
Israeli-founded transportation system company Via has acquired Fleetonomy, a fleet management software startup based in Tel Aviv, in a bid to expand into the delivery and logistics solution sphere. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed but Globes reported that a source estimated it at between $15M and $25M. Following the acquisition, Fleetconomy’s 15 employees are expected to join Via.
