MaaS Global raises over €10 million in funding

MaaS Global, a developer of the ‘Mobility as a Service’ (MaaS) concept, has raised over €10 million in a funding round with Toyota Financial Services of Japan and its insurance partner Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Company being significant investors.

Thanks to this capital investment, the Whim app, which was recently launched in the Helsinki region in Finland, will expand to international MaaS-markets worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

“We are very pleased to partner with MaaS Global and work together on the development of multimodal mobility solutions,” Riki Inuzuka, CEO of Toyota Financial Services. “The vision and business model of MaaS Global marries with Toyota’s strategic objective to serve the mobility needs of our current and future customers.”

MaaS Global is the world’s first mobility operator and was established in April 2015. Its Whim app allows users to plan journeys and purchase various mobility services through a single service. The latest funding round means MaaS Global can prepare for global growth by scaling its services to international markets. In the next five years, the company will set its sights on expanding its services to all forms of transport worldwide.

“Cooperation with one of the best-known brands in the world is extremely positive news for us. Toyota’s global network, high-quality R&D and genuinely customer-oriented culture will give our company a strong lead as it grows towards being the largest player in its sector,” added Sampo Hietanen, founder and CEO of MaaS Global.

MaaS Global wants to globally revolutionise the way people move. Recently, ABI Research has estimated that the value of the MaaS sector will exceed $1 trillion by 2030 and MaaS Global aims to capture a large share of the mobility market: “Private car ownership will not be pleasant in cities for much longer: it is slow, expensive and environmentally unfriendly. The technology for seamless consumption of mobility services is already here,” Mr Hietanen continued.

Whim is now available in the Helsinki region and it will also be going live in the West Midlands in the UK and in Amsterdam in The Netherlands.