To improve reliability in public transport, the company, founded in October 2020 by Daniel Sattel, Houssem Braham, and Daniel Tyoschitz, is committed to mitigating technical disruptions. Awake Mobility relies on the methods of condition monitoring and predictive maintenance, which have been well-established for many years in industries such as aviation, wind power, and manufacturing. However, they have not yet found their way into the bus industry.
Specifically, Awake Mobility is installing self-developed IoT hardware on the buses, which the startup uses to read the buses' relevant health and operating data. The additional hardware is necessary because the existing interfaces used for fleet management cannot provide all relevant information. This data is then stored in a central platform and analyzed by machine learning algorithms. The startup's solution can then provide recommendations for efficient maintenance, allowing operators to proactively maintain their buses instead of reacting to errors that occur.
This is not only intended to make public transport buses more punctual, but also to enable operators to save costs caused by outages. Not only is repairs usually more expensive than maintenance, but organizing replacement buses and other measures to maintain service also incur additional costs, according to the founders.
Financing from Silicon Valley
The startup has now secured pre-seed financing from Silicon Valley-based Synapse Partners, High-Tech Gründerfonds, and Vireo Ventures. Two of Awake's three founders have lived in Silicon Valley in the past and still maintain close ties to the Californian innovation ecosystem.
With the raised funds, Awake plans to further expand its team and advance product development. To this end, the startup has already initiated pilot projects with municipal and private bus operators. In the future, however, Awake plans to expand beyond buses and include all other modes of transportation. The partners have not disclosed the amount of funding.
