Meet SMRT’s stealth startup, which just got funded by Toyota Tsusho

Photo credit: Jo Sau

Toyota Tsusho – a subsidiary of Japanese carmaker Toyota – is leading the series A investment of MobilityX, a Singapore-based “mobility-as-a-service” startup owned by the city-state’s largest transport operator, SMRT Corporation. The size of the round was not disclosed, but a MobilityX spokesperson calls it a “multi-million dollar investment.”

MobilityX essentially allows transport operators to run their own multi-modal versions of transportation network apps like Grab or Uber. According to its press release, it “integrates and optimizes various transportation options for commuters onto a single digital platform.”

Set up in February 2018, the startup hasn’t played up its links to SMRT. While MobilityX announced that it had received seed funding from the transport operator, a public filing shows that SMRT Corp was, in fact, the sole shareholder, investing about US$1.1 million in MobilityX Pte Ltd.

However, the spokesperson told Tech in Asia that employees will get shares in the company.

MobilityX has secured partnerships with various entities to test its solutions, including Nanyang Technological University (NTU), JTC Corporation, and CapitaLand.

Its partnership with NTU and JTC, which began last August, entailed integrating shuttle buses, bikes, e-scooters, and more into a single app called Jalan, which can be used within the premises of those organizations. Over 67,000 trips were booked on the app.

SMRT subsidiary

MobilityX’s founding team consists of current and former executives from SMRT and various government ministries. CEO Colin Lim is listed as the managing director of SMRT Services, an arm of SMRT Corp that provides transport‑related technical services and support capabilities. He’s also the vice president of the strategic relations office in SMRT.

Here are the backgrounds of other MobilityX personnel:

• Peter Tan, chairman (board member of SMRT Corp)
• Anna Qiu Zhi, head of partnerships (former senior engineer at SMRT Corp)
• Collin Ng, chief architect (former senior solutions architect at Standard Chartered Bank)
• Michelle Tan, head of strategy and business development (former head of the aerospace division at the Singapore Economic Development Board)
• Xie Litian, head of transport planning (former assistant chief specialist at the Land Transport Authority)
• Andrew Tan, deputy director of business planning at SMRT Services and MobilityX
• Leong Wei Yang, operations manager at MobilityX and operations executive at SMRT Corp

The situation of employees holding dual appointments may be temporary. “As MobilityX grows it moves towards being a standalone startup very soon,” the spokesperson said.

MobilityX isn’t the only company from Singapore pushing for mobility-as-a-service. A startup called Qiq has been making inroads into Vietnam. It aims to deliver over 5,000 electric personal mobility devices to Vietnamese cities over the next two years, starting with Hanoi, Da Nang, and Hai Phong.

Analysis

The success of such mobility-as-a-service solutions is far from guaranteed. With Grab and Go-Jek dominating the ride-hailing space in Southeast Asia, and Mobike and Ofo being the main bike-sharing apps in Singapore, it’s unclear if there is sufficient demand for an app with multiple modes of transport.

Success will depend on a few factors: