We have just 1 day remaining until we unveil the winner of the 2023 Empower Women in Shared Mobility Program at our virtual award ceremony (register for your spot here!) However, our judges have been hard at work behind the scenes, reviewing and discussing each of the top 5 applications, using the EmpowerWISM criteria to whittle it down to the Top 3.
Due to the number of high caliber applicants, this year has been the closest race to date but our judges are using the EmpowerWISM assessment criteria to help them make their final decisions. Here is a recap:
Vision |
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Leadership |
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Innovation |
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Keep reading to find out which companies made it to the Top 3. PLUS we’ll spotlight this year’s ‘outstanding applicant’ and introduce our 2023 award ceremony MC, the amazing Zoe Eather!
To learn more about the 17 applicants including the top 5 companies, click here.
So, without further ado (and in no particular order) here are the top three finalists!
EmpowerWISM 2023: Top 3 Finalists
itselectric
Curbside Electrical Vehicle Charging (with Revenue Share)
Where are you located?
New York, USA
What year was your venture established?
2021
Describe your venture
“We are itselectric, bringing EV charging to the millions of drivers who cannot charge at home as they park their cars on city streets. We do this by overcoming city electrical grid limitations by using energy from buildings to power a publicly accessible curbside charger. In return, we share revenue with the property owners.
Our 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 EVs.”
How would winning EmpowerWISM 2023 help your venture?
“With less than 2% of Venture capital given to female-founded companies. I can attest that when that same company focuses in a traditionally male dominated industry of transportation AND offers solutions via hardware; that number is even lower.
To counter this, and despite having a male co-founder, I have been the face of the company, working consistently to promote itselectric’s message to change the game for what leadership in this sector can and should look like.
Our mission is to provides curbside charging for electric vehicles to ensure that every community – no matter the median income or prevalence of driveways and garages – has access to clean transportation. Winning the Empower WiSM program would be an incredible lift for the work of itselectric. The amplification Empower WiSM could offer through conferences, podcasts, and interviews is unmatched and we would be thrilled to be awarded this honor in recognition of the work we are set out to accomplish.”
NINA
Smart Cities, Safer People
Where are you located?
Recife, Brazil
What year was your venture established?
2018
Describe your venture
“More than 65% of paying public transport users are women, especially black members of the underclass – in Brazil CDE class (ITDP, 2018). However, sexual harassment, for example, was only criminalized in Brazil in 2018. Since then, there are still no clear reporting channels, guidelines, or plans to combat gender violence in the context of urban mobility. There is still a lack of consolidated data on official government bases and clear public combat policies. In this sense, NINA’s vision is, in up to 10 years, to provide companies and the government 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 our solution, NINA enables the construction of safer, more inclusive, and livable cities for all people, especially women. We 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, we 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.”
How would winning EmpowerWISM 2023 help your venture?
“Women are the most vulnerable group to gender-based violence when traveling. Every 4 seconds, there is a case of harassment in Brazilian public transport (Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública, 2018), and 97% of Brazilian women have already suffered harassment in urban mobility (Locomotiva and Patrícia Galvão institutes, 2019).
Faced with such alarming data, NINA aims to combat and prevent harassment and gender violence in urban mobility through its technology, collecting data and using them to influence the construction of public policies in favor of safer and more inclusive cities for all. NINA is already in one Brazilian capital, Fortaleza, Ceará. Since 2019 we’re the complaint channel integrated into Whatsapp that allows public transport users in the county to report sexual harassment in mobility. Since then, we have already influenced the construction of safety protocols and public policies and coping with gender violence in city displacements. Now our goal is to expand to more places, bringing this social innovation to more people.
In this way, the Empower WiSM has the potential to amplify our voices on a global scale. With the consultancy and Growth Strategy support, NINA can scale and promote our social solution to other countries. With this program, we can improve our technology to transform all countries into smart cities and transform cities more secure for women and everyone.”
Whee!
A cargo bike subscription service for urban families
Where are you located?
Oslo, Norway
What year was your venture established?
2020
Describe your venture
“Whee! is a design driven, user centric impact startup. We 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.
We offer a subscription for an accessible midtail cargo bike. A bike for three with insurance, maintenance and community included at a fixed monthly price. Our 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 we will accellerate our hardware project. We are developing our 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, we firmly believe it is the missing piece in the puzzle of sustainable urban mobility and we want it to have the biggest possible reach and impact.”
How would winning EmpowerWISM 2023 help your venture?
“Winning the Empower WiSM would offer a platform to widen the reach of our truly impactful, equal, mobility service, made by women, for families. We are a different startup, focusing on the user group who are the most prone to car dependency, offering a low cost, eco-friendly, healthy and fun alternative. Winning Empower WiSM will let us showcase our company, our vision of alternative mobility and allow us to improve cities for all.”
Meet the EmpowerWISM Virtual Award Ceremony MC: Zoe Eather
Zoe Eather is an experienced consultant, Churchill Fellow and engineer who specialises in Smart Communities, that is using different ways of thinking and technology as enablers to make the places we live more accessible, liveable and sustainable for all. The combination of Zoe’s engineering background and her ability to engage and explain complex topics in a friendly and informative way, allows her to offer future-thinking, useful and realistic strategic advice.
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.
Register for the 2023 Award Ceremony
EmpowerWISM 2023 Outstanding Applicant:
‘Commute’ spelt backwards is ‘Tummoc’ (well, minus the “e”). That’s what we’re here for—To 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, soon we’ll be launching online ticketing in other cities. Plan your journey with the best possible public transport routes in seconds!
Explore the fastest and cheapest bus, metro or bus AND metro routes. This is a one-of-a-kind service backed by a PATENT! You can also track the cost of your journey and the carbon saved. We also help you find the best first and last-mile rides to get you to and from public transit stations. That’s not all!
There’s a lot that Tummoc is working on behind the scenes. In the future, you’ll be able to get a single QR/ticket for your entire multi-modal commute. Leading the Indian smart commute revolution, Tummoc is a multi-modal platform promoting public transport while making the most of private modes.”
EmpowerWISM 2023 Partners
