The funding raised by Ubirider will enable the company to grow internationally and to improve the product development and marketing teams. The funding round was co-led by the Portuguese investment funds Techtree Investments and Cedrus R&D III, with the participation of two business angels: José Santos (Portugal/U.S.A.) and Andrés Alcalá (Colombia); this led to a total of €1.95M of investment in the start-up co-founded by INESC TEC.
Portuguese cities like Lisbon, Évora, Faro, Beja or Cascais already benefit from Ubirider’s services to simplify the planning, booking, and payment of multimodal trips – thanks to the development of a mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) digital platform that registered more than 11.4 million transactions. The next goal is to take this platform beyond borders, expanding the business internationally and reinforcing Ubirider’s role in the fintech mobility market.
“In partnership with Mastercard, we have successfully implemented our digital payments platform in public transportation operators in Lisbon, Évora, Faro and Beja. This process, combined with the use of the MaaS platform in these cities and in Cascais, resulted in about 300.000 registered users and 2.1 million tickets sold”, explained Paulo Ferreira dos Santos. According to the CEO of Ubirider, the successful use of the solution in Portugal, and the strategic partnership with both Mastercard and other companies like Deloitte, Payshop, or the European technology bank Viva.com, demonstrate the potential of the Portuguese start-up’s technology.
“We are not only contributing to making the transportation experience significantly better, more integrated, and simpler for users, but also empowering transportation and mobility operators; by using our solution, they are able to obtain meaningful real-time data on travel trends. This information is extremely relevant to increase management efficiency, but also to make it easier to access transportation services and interoperability with other means, an essential aspect to attract and better serve passengers”, said the official.
In early March, Ubirider closed a €1.95M funding round co-led by Techtree Investments (a CTT investment fund managed by Iberis Capital), and Cedrus R&D III (an investment fund managed by Cedrus Capital). “This money will allow us to expand the company internationally and strengthen our product development, marketing and sales teams”, mentioned Paulo Ferreira dos Santos – a strategy that meets the growing trend for the demand for both ticketing and digital payment solutions.
“The positive feedback we receive from our customers encourages us to continuously improve our solutions to create a more convenient travel experience for passengers, but also to provide operators, regardless of their size, a digital platform that aims to optimise operational and commercial efficiency”.
In 2019, Ubirider launched the MaaS Pick app, for travel planning and multi-transit payments. This system is available on the Apple Store and Google Play, and allows users to plan trips, pay for tickets, and travel to any destination, in any location, using the best combination of means of transportation.
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