Gunnar Froh is founder and CEO of Wunder Mobility, the market leader in new mobility technology. Founded in 2014, the company develops a technology platform that enables companies, cities and startups to launch and scale new mobility services. Froh joins from Airbnb, where he played a senior role in its internationalization until late 2013.
Airbnb acquired Accoleo, a housing marketplace he founded in 2011. Prior to that, Froh gained experience as a consultant at McKinsey and founded the nonprofit car-sharing organization CampusCar.
In addition to his role as CEO of Wunder Mobility, Gunnar Froh is active as an angel investor in the field of mobility and sustainability. He is a member of the Innovation Advisory Board of the United Nations Population Fund and host of the Wunder Mobility Podcast. Born in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, he completed his business studies at WHU in Germany and at the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, USA. He lives and works in Hamburg.
Partner Spotlight: Interview with Gunnar Froh, Founder & CEO of Wunder Mobility
What solutions does Wunder Mobility offer and how would you differentiate your offerings from competitors?
Wunder Mobility offers the most advanced fleet management software in the industry. We help operators, startups and OEMs to launch and scale shared mobility services worldwide. Our solution enables mobility companies to operate sharing-enabled vehicles on the streets, whether bicycles, kick scooters, mopeds or cars. Our customers can use it for both B2B and B2C use cases. With our in-house development team and technical support members, we are able to provide the best experience both for our customers and their users. We therefore contractually guarantee up-time for both backend and frontend and are proud to power some of the largest mobility operations on our side.
How critical is multimodality in shared mobility? How can tech enable it?
We see multimodality becoming more of a reality for a lot of operators. Offering a wide range of mobility solutions ultimately captures a broader audience and therefore leads to a higher demand and usage of vehicles. It is crucial to have a technology provider that is vehicle agnostic in order to be able to offer a wide range of mobility options.
How is Wunder Mobility helping to change the end customer’s behavior and making them choose sustainable mobility?
With our technology, we lower the barriers for starting a shared mobility business. Customers can get a comprehensive and functioning white label app from us and start using it immediately. The new shared mobility offers are a complement to the existing means of public transport and we believe that functioning alternatives will gradually substitute private car ownership. Users will thus learn that they do not need to own a car or at least a second or third car in the family. We see this process as being further accelerated by the fact that cities will increasingly regulate urban traffic in order to achieve their climate protection goals. In the end, a mix of new regulations and convenient alternatives will help to change customer behaviour.
How does user experience differ across distinct transport modalities?
Essentially, the various means of transport differ in terms of comfort, convenience, availability, price, degree of digitalisation and individuality. Although public transport objectively offers an appealing and convenient alternative with high availability in the inner-city and a relatively low price, it was not considered a safe transport modality during many phases of the pandemic. Users increasingly opted for individual means of transport rather than taking the bus or train. Providers of bikes, scooters or car-sharing in particular profited from this. With simple in-app booking, sharing operators offer the certainty of an individual and direct trip from A to B. Attractive especially due to the increased convenience and competitive price.
How important is it for an operator to choose the right vehicle?
The operation software is the backbone of every operation. But choosing the right vehicle might be one of the most important business decisions you’ll have to make. Choosing the right vehicle is a strategic decision and has a significant impact on daily operations. Before choosing a vehicle, it is important to know which type of vehicle is suitable for the city you want to operate in. What are the needs of the users? How well developed is the infrastructure? You should also consider seasonality. Once you have decided on a vehicle type, it is about reliability, connectivity and range of the vehicle. Sharing vehicles need to be robust, solid and easy to maintain in order to keep maintenance costs as low as possible, as they are the biggest cost factor.
What’s next for Wunder Mobility?
Wunder Mobility keeps on improving and extending our fleet management software. With our in-house development team, product features and updates can be built fast and reliable. On top of that, we co-developed our very own sharing-ready eMoped and eBike in collaboration with the world’s largest light electric vehicle manufacturer, YADEA.
Get started! Find out more at Wundermobility.com
