Coming hot off the heels of revealing that his startup aims to launch a new service that will compete with Uber and Taxify, GoMetro‘s founder Justin Coetzee says being accepted into the UK’s Intelligent Mobility (IM) Accelerator, validates his startup’s “product-market fit”.
The SA smart mobility startup was last month chosen as one of is one of six startups from across the UK (the SA startup has an office there) for the IM Accelerator based in Milton Keynes.
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The IM Accelerator — a partnership in the UK between Transport Systems Catapult and Wayra UK — aims boost high-growth startups in the mobility sector.
During the 12-month accelerator programme GoMetro will be able to tap an affiliation partnership (through Wayra) with the global telecommunications giant, Telefonica SA, and locally through their UK brand O2.
In a press release yesterday, Coetzee, said he sees the accelerator as the rocket fuel the company needs to bring its vision of “flx”, or Flexible Mobility, to one of the world’s biggest and most attractive mobility markets (see Ventureburn’s exclusive here last week, on how the company plans to take on Uber, Taxify).
“When we chose the UK as the first market that we would aim to enter, it was because the UK has a lot of similarities with our home market of South Africa – terrible congestion due to high levels of car ownership and usage, public transport ridership that is dropping every year and a tech-savvy and mobile-phone oriented market ready for a paradigm shift,” he said.
“Being accepted to the IM Accelerator, and becoming a partner of Wayra, Transport Catapult, Network Rail and ThoughtWorks validates our product-market fit,” says GoMetro founder
GoMetro’s country manager for the UK, Gary Morgan added that winning a seat on the Intelligent Mobility programme “is an accolade in itself, and reaffirms what we believe and that we can bring flexibility to the Intelligent Mobility landscape”.
“This accelerator will reduce the time it takes to get to the intelligent mobility future we talk about, and we are eager to add our twist of “flx” to the Mobility-as- a-Service sector,” he said.
