‘Netflix of Transportation’ is a trillion-dollar market by 2030 – and this Toyota-backed Finnish startup is in pole position to seize it, says Nordic Businessinsider about MaaS Global. Guess who is in the lead?

Sampo Hietanen wants to do something un-Finnish, and dare to dream big. Really big. Since 2015, he has used his very own blueprint for the future of transportation, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), to build a startup in full-throttle.

Much like ordering movies on Netflix or music on Spotify, Hietanen’s company, MaaS Global, aims to fulfil customers’ mobility needs with a monthly subscription service. “What if you had ‘unlimited Europe’ – ground and air transport included – through one app that would be your companion wherever you go? Then you could truly be a global citizen,” Hietanen says, revealing the ultimate vision of his company.

Since last fall, MaaS Global’s Whim app enables trial customers in Helsinki to get from A to B using any preferred mode of road transportation. An Uber on steroids. Just two weeks ago, Maas Global closed a €10 million funding round from car giant Toyota to fuel international expansion of Whim. So could Finland under Hietanen’s lead export a global MaaS mobility revolution?

Hietanen, 42, is one of the fathers of MaaS, an idea he presented in a research paper in 2015 while heading a Finnish research body on intelligent transportation services (ITS Finland). With MaaS, Hietanen painted a ‘new paradigm’ for transportation; driven by mobility operators that gather all private and public transportation options in a city into a unified whole.

Two interconnected trends are in his favor: the spread of smartphones and the sharing economy. Together, he says, these will reduce the need for car ownership in urban transport, and open up demand for mobility operators like MaaS Global. “The technology is already here,” he quips. “Private car ownership will not be pleasant in cities for much longer: it is slow, expensive and environmentally unfriendly,” Hietanen said in the press release announcing Toyota’s investment.

MaaS is going to be a trillion-dollar market by 2030, according to an estimate by ABI Research. And now that he gets to put his concept into action, Hietanen told an audience at Cleantech Forum Europe in Helsinki recently, he “would be happy to capture a tenth of that”. Meanwhile, Hietanen says, “investors are asking, why would the solution that puts MaaS on the map come from tiny Finland?”

Thousands of people applied to be eligible for a limited launch of Whim in Helsinki last fall. “There were more applicants than what we could take on board to keep service levels acceptable,” Hietanen says, noting that it has all gone “better than expected”.

A few hundred Whim-customers in the Finnish capital have had options ranging from a 89 EUR basic package to 389 EUR premium, with unlimited access to taxis, public transport, car rental and bikes. Rental cars and bikes can be picked up from various pick-up points spread around Helsinki

When Whim-users enter their destination, the app optimizes travel options among more than 2500 vehicles. Think of it like searching for the best route on Google Maps, but instead of just route planning, you can order all those transport services with the monthly ticket that is available in-app. Whim also offers a pay-as-you-go option, where you pay for each trip. “We cannot promise that everything will be taken care of, but it lets you try Whim.”

It’s a work in progress, to say the very least.

“Our starting point is: what is our customers’ dream? Once we’ve figured out the dream, then we can start tweaking and adding services,” Hietanen says. MaaS Global’s challenge is not only to build a working app, but to bring onboard all the local partners.

Helsinki partners include public transport company HSL, local car rental company Veho, in addition to Finland’s largest taxi dispatch company Taksi Helsinki – which came onboard in May. “We cannot thank our partners enough. They have been very open minded and ready to try this.” Whim is expanding into European cities during 2017. Hietanen says that there has been no need for outbound sales – “interest towards MaaS Global has been organic”. He is tangibly elated, and frankly surprised about the roaring interest he has attracted with his young company.

Read more: http://nordic.businessinsider.com/the-29-coolest-uk-female-startup-founders-2017-5/

• Hietanen is “tangibly elated, and frankly surprised about the roaring interest he has attracted with his young company.”