Finalist | ULU (Netherlands) - Unlocking potential for a better mobility experience

03/12/2015  |  CODE_n Alumni, CODE_n15 Startup CONTEST, Interview

ulu quadratischOur Future Mobility finalist ULU created a a vehicle/driver ecosystem connecting stakeholders around the vehicle with the driver in mind. It provides real time answers to businesses in the ecosystem and connected vehicle experience and feedback to the driver. We talked to Jošt Faganel, CEO of ULU, about his startup and their and solution.

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Where did your idea for the company come from?

Jošt Faganel (ULU): The idea for our startup came from the founding team being people who play with data. We believe there is a huge unused or better “unlocked” potential of car and driving related data, that can – at the end of the day – bring a better mobility experience to drivers.

For which kind of audience is your product or service intended and what problem is it solving?

Jošt Faganel (ULU): Ultimately our product targets consumers, but through the business channels of the of the car ecosystem. We enable companies to adopt and leverage the connected car within their businesses, optimizing the cost side of operations and enabling them to offer new connected car services to their customers.

Tell us a bit about the company’s founders like their professional or industry background and the origins of the founding idea.

Jošt Faganel (ULU): The founding team loves data, thats where we come from – data analytics, big data. In our most recent ventures we worked with businesses helping them understand and create value from big datasets on customer, market etc… Working a lot with insurance companies we saw that connected car is being adopted, but is still very complex and costly for companies. This is why we created ULU – as the connected car ecosystem, that businesses can easily adopt as a service and extend to consumers.

Which kind of use cases are the most popular with ULU right now and what else would be possible that people might not have fully discovered yet?

Jošt Faganel (ULU): Three applications are most popular with ULU right now: insurance companies adopting usage based insurance models, where ULU delivers the KPIs and application set that enable insurance companies to do this at low cost and quickly; leasing companies, who optimize management of their assets – cars, and also extending the services they offer to customers, which ULU enables; and Car Dealers and Repair shops, who are offering new connected car & car health monitoring services to their customer… We see ULU as the universal connected car platform and as such can be used in many applications. One which is really relevant is usage based road charging and vehicle related taxes. We already provide information on when and how much certain roads are used and this could be the core technology on how mobility is charged in the future.