Iomob the World’s First Interoperable Mobility on Demand Platform, Boyd Cohen, CEO, Iomob

Iomob was incorporated in 2018 to transform the way companies and transit agencies support seamless multimodality.  While in Europe, seamless multimodal mobility is called Mobility as a Service (MaaS), in North America there has been more focus on Mobility on Demand (MOD).  

In our early days, we were inspired by MaaS pioneers Whim (MaaS Global) who really defined this segment from a B2C perspective, with a strong focus on deeply integrated public transit and replacing car dependence by offering an alternative subscription model to multimodal services.  As such we also referred to Iomob as a B2B/B2G MaaS platform.

But in 2020, we increasingly grew disenchanted with a growing number of false dichotomies many in the MaaS community have asserted. We believe the false dichotomies in MaaS including: public vs. private, B2B vs B2C, subscription vs pay as you go, urban only vs. regional or globally roaming and an anti-car bias in MaaS do not align with Iomob’s attempt to create an agnostic, inter and intracity, roaming, plug and play mobility marketplace for private and public sector organizations.

Our platform supports intercity and intracity multimodality while enabling any user of any digital interface (apps or websites) connected to the Iomob platform to “roam” anywhere in the world where Iomob has connected vehicles or mobility services.  We believe Iomob has been shattering some of the false dichotomies and the global mobility community has responded. In the past year or so, we have won the ERTICO Public Choice Award, South Summit top Mobility & Logistics Startup, the Federation of International Automobiles (FiA) top mobility startup and the 2020 European TravelTech Innovator of the Year.

While Iomob continues to embrace and support the MaaS community, we no longer self-identify as a MaaS company, but rather a Mobility on Demand Platform which supports a range of use cases for our enterprise companies, including but not limited to MaaS.

The Association for Commuter Transport (ACT) defines Mobility on Demand (MOD) as: 

an innovative, user-focused approach which leverages emerging mobility services, integrated transit networks and operations, real-time data, connected travelers, and cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to allow for a more traveler-centric, transportation system- of-systems approach, providing improved mobility options to all travelers and users of the system in an efficient and safe manner.

Below represents Iomob’s perspective of the MaaS vs. MOD models.  They are not mutually exclusive by any means and in fact Iomob, a MOD Platform, is actively supporting MaaS deployments, for example our near-term deployment with Skanetrafiken in Sweden which has generated buzz in the MaaS industry because of its embracing a level of openness not normally found in most public transit driven MaaS deployments.

Iomob is staking a claim to be the world’s first Mobility on Demand Platform.  In 2021 and beyond, Iomob looks forward to serving any public or private enterprise that finds added value in adding third party mobility services to their offerings be that for a regional MaaS platform to a businesses that wants to offer its employees access to local micromobility services.  All are welcome to leverage Iomob’s Mobility on Demand platform for whatever use case benefits them and their target audience.