Baloise Mobility Accelerator: Interview with let it ...

Roshani Anna Amin

September 24, 2021

10 weeks 10 start-ups: In this week's interview we sat down with Phillipp Hommelsheim of CARMINO and Kevin Bieler of RIBE who discussed the impact the accelerator has had so far for their start-ups and how mobility is so much more than just about getting from A to B.

We have subscriptions for everything from Netflix to Amazon - so why not mobility too?

CARMINO

#ClimateAction #SustainableMobility #CarbonFootprintTracker

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RIBE

#Innovative #RideForLife #ChallengingTheStatusQuo

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How did your start-ups each come about?

CARMINO: Carmino is your personal carbon reduction & offset manager for sustainable mobility & travel. With our mobile app users can automatically track, reduce and offset their mobility & travel carbon footprint. We need both technical innovation and behavioural change if we want to tackle the climate crisis - especially in the field of mobility. Carmino is based on the insight that only personally attributable carbon emissions will make me care. For mobility and travel, we can use technology to accurately measure and calculate personal carbon footprints - and help people make their mobility routines more sustainable.

RIBE: We were initially founded by Kris and Tsering. As a motorbike lover and owner of six myself, Kris and Tsering would often approach me for input. It made sense for me to also join the company and as a trio we officially co-founded RIBE.

RIBE was founded with the idea that the beauty of motorcycling should be easily accessible to everyone without having to own a bike. That's why we're revolutionising the motorcycle industry by ushering in a new era of motorcycling through a subscription / sharing model. It's goodbye to wasted time, high acquisition, depreciation + maintenance costs and hello to easy and convenient subscription & sharing.

Why specifically the Baloise Mobility Accelerator?

CARMINO: We decided to participate in an accelerator, because it's always helpful to get an external perspective. Even as an early stage start-up, you start to stick to things and don't criticise or iterate them. It's important to have outside perspectives - really shaking things up andgaining feedback! This was our main motivation as well as being involved in an opportunity with a company with a great reputation. A company like Baloise truly provides valuable feedback - we know they are able to build companies and they are able to develop a business even as a young start-up. It's always helpful to get some feedback from people who have experienced and successfully ran businesses.

RIBE:If you just want to find someone that gives you financial support- that's easy. But we want to have a partner - someone who can help you with any questions - legal, projections whatever it may be! We needed someone who can really help us and this is something that we experienced with this programme.

What do you think is different about the mobility industry?

CARMINO: It's very much about cooperationwhich I think is because we aren't competingabout the same things; people can get from A to B in various ways. There's public transport, you can use the train and you can use Micro Mobility. If you're a start-up, and offering is good, for example, there's a lot of room. The market is growing- there's so much demandthat you don't need to compete about a new unit, you don't need to disrupt markets, you can build new ones.

Building on that, how do you think that the world of mobility is changing? It seems it's not necessarily just about getting from A to B anymore. RIBE:I believe thatflexibilityis the key. We have subscriptions for everything from Netflix to Amazon - so why not mobility too?

Everyone has said insurance is very important for mobility. Why?

CARMINO : Two things come to mind. The first thing is we are gathering a lot of mobility data from how people get from A to B. And I think there is a potential to rethink mobility insurances that are not based around the vehicle. There are so many ways you can get from A to B and based on that insurance cover should be available. So this is one thing that could be interesting, with Baloise, especially in the field of mobility. The second thing is, when you try to build a B2C business you need trust. But, it's really hard to build up trust when you are a new brand - however, you can't build a brand overnight. So having the support and backing of a well established organisation like Baloise brings many benefits. Most importantly it shows that they believe in our business and see our potential.

Is there a particular thing you've enjoyed during this programme?

CARMINO:So, what is highly beneficial for us are the connections to all the other start-ups. I recently attended a start-up event here in Berlin and I met two of the accelerator participants. It's really cool - you're in a city, and it was not competitive or giving a feeling like we couldn't each shareour strategic thoughts. We pitched our start-ups, we discussed what is easy to do and what is maybe the hard part of founding.

RIBE: Definitely the inspirational breakfasts. From these you can get in touch with people that normally as a little start-up you wouldn't be able to get time with. For example, we interacted with Manuel Hartmann from TheSalesPlaybookand Matthew Jones from Anthemis. You can connect with them on LinkedIn, and you also can have them as an expert for a 30 minutesor one-hour session that you have during the week.

Mobility@Baloise

Learn more about the accelerator and the Mobility@Baloise journey!

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