This week, on Tuesday January 31st, we hosted the Empower Women in Shared Mobility Pitch, virtual Award Ceremony. We’d like to thank everyone that tuned in to show their support for this years amazing finalists. Each of our 17 applicants inspired us with their passion and dedication to their chosen field within the shared mobility sector and we’d also like to say big thank you to everyone who was brave enough to apply this year – you are ALL winners in our book.
If you missed the Award Ceremony, keep reading to find out this year’s winner!
Watch the full EmpowerWISM 2023 Award Ceremony here!
EmpowerWISM 2023 Award Ceremony
Introduction from Award Ceremony MC, Zoe Eather
Zoe keeps up-to-date with the latest trends and shares her learnings through hosting The Smart Community Podcast. Through her boutique consultancy My Smart Community, she offers strategic advisory on dealing with disruption, leveraging infrastructure spend and major projects, smart technology in region communities and facilitaing genuine collaboration.
Zoe made this year’s EmpowerWISM Award Ceremony a very one special for movmi. Her high energy and lively MC’ing – despite the late hour in Australia! – kept our panelists and attendees completely engaged throughout the entire ceremony. Thanks again Zoe, we can’t wait to work with you again.
EmpowerWISM 2023: How it started vs how it's going
After a short introduction from Zoe, movmi’s CEO and EmpowerWISM judge, Sandra Phillips took a few minutes to speak about the gender imbalance in the shared mobility industry, how the EmpowerWISM Pitch was born and even more exciting, how it has developed and progressed over the last 3 years.
The EmpowerWISM cohort now has 50 amazing women owned and women-led companies that we have seen grow and evolve over the last few years. We are so thrilled to have them as part of our network and can’t wait to see what 2023 and beyond has in store for them!
movmi’s Venkatesh Gopal took to the screen next to put this year’s program into context and shared an overview of the 17 applicants. We continued to extend our reach globally this year and were lucky enough to have applicants from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
EmpowerWISM 2023: Meet this year's hardworking Judging panel
Throughout the process the panel of judges evaluated these three pillars: vision, leadership and innovation, which was extremely difficult because each company had completely unique visions and goals for the shared mobility industry – all very valuable and necessary.
The judges also took at look at each companies scalability, whether they would create equity in transportation, how sustainable they are (using 3 of the 11 UN goals) and once they reached the top 5, it came down to the face-to-face interviews to decide who the finalists were going to be and ultimately, the winner! Thank you to our judging panel for all your hard work and for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend those very difficult decision making sessions.
Outstanding Applicant: Meet Tummoc
Tummoc’s goal is reverse the downwards trend in the use of public transport in urban India! Indian cities are congested beyond comfort and the private-vehicle-driven commute habits lead to record pollution levels. The immediate solution is a mass transition to Public Transport. Tummoc helps track and find actionable & accurate intracity travel information for the bus/metro/suburban rail. You can purchase BMTC bus passes directly on the app currently only available in Bangalore but they will soon we’ll be launching online ticketing in other cities.
Second Runner-up: NINA
NINA’s 10 year vision is to provide companies and the government in Brazil with grounded information to understand why public spaces are unsafe and to favor combat and safety actions for these women. This way ensures that no woman suffers gender-based violence when traveling.
Through their solution, NINA enables the construction of safer, more inclusive, and livable cities for all people, especially women. They encourage complaints and collect data to influence important decision-making to improve the city, especially for those at the bottom of the social pyramid. By combating gender violence in mobility, they increase women’s perception of safety, encourage them to belong to their cities, and prevent them from leaving schools, universities, and the job market, for example.
First Runner-up: itselectric
itselectric are bringing EV charging to the millions of drivers who cannot charge at home, because they park their cars on city streets. They do this by overcoming city electrical grid limitations, using energy from buildings to power a publicly accessible curbside charger. In return, they share revenue with the property owners.
Their mission is to bring curbside EV charging to cities across the U.S. and advance the adoption of electric vehicles by partnering with property owners to unlock access to untapped electricity. itselectric provides property owners with the option to earn a passive income while making it easier for everyone to charge their EVs.
EmpowerWISM 2023 Winner: Whee!
Whee! is a design driven, user centric impact startup. They want to change urban mobility by offering a car alternative to the user group that needs it the most, namely families in dense urban areas.
They offer a subscription for an accessible midtail cargo bike. A bike for three with insurance, maintenance and community included at a fixed monthly price. Their solution is research based, and is tapping into the specific transportation needs of urban women and caretakers, needing to trip chain, with kids and goods.
In 2023 they will accelerate their hardware project. Whee! are developing their own mid tail cargo bike focusing on 3 arches: 1 longevity and circularity 2 fleet operation and repairability 3 User experience, especially focusing on women and families. This combination is a new approach to LEV design. Bundled with an holistic service, they firmly believe it is the missing piece in the puzzle of sustainable urban mobility and they want it to have the biggest possible reach and impact.
EmpowerWISM 2023 Ceramic Mug
The goal of Empower Women in Shared Mobility 2023 (EmpowerWISM) is to encourage and promote the women-founded and managed companies within our industry, who are creating waves and making change happen.
By purchasing this mug, you will be supporting and empowering (not only women in mobility) but women in management and founding roles within the shared mobility industry.
