Frank­furt a. m. — DB Digi­tal Ventures, through which Deut­sche Bahn promo­tes new digi­tal busi­ness models, is inves­t­ing in two young U.S. compa­nies. With Ride­cell and GoKid, DB is focu­sing on inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies and two offe­rings that meaningfully comple­ment the core rail busi­ness and could play a decisive role in the mobi­lity market in the future.

“Deut­sche Bahn was the startup of the first indus­trial revo­lu­tion. Today, we are brin­ging start­ups on board to expand our tech­no­logy exper­tise and deve­lop connec­ted, custo­mi­zed offe­rings for our custo­mers in the Mobi­lity 4.0 era,” said Prof. Sabina Jeschke, DB Board Member for Digi­ta­liza­tion and Technology.

GoKid brings child­ren safely to school
New York-based startup GoKid makes life easier for parents. The company opera­tes a carpoo­ling plat­form that gets child­ren to school, sports, or other recrea­tio­nal acti­vi­ties with each other safely and on time. GoKid has alre­ady orga­ni­zed more than 100,000 trips, prima­rily in the USA. Parents save time and money and protect the envi­ron­ment because trips are shared and bund­led. “We want to support DB’s commit­ment to new forms of mobi­lity with our carpools for school­child­ren” explains Dr. Stefa­nie Lemcke, CEO GoKid.

Ride­cell is the world’s leading provi­der of carsha­ring and ridesha­ring plat­forms, as well as for control­ling auto­no­mous fleets
Foun­ded in 2009 and based in San Fran­cisco, Ride­cell has deve­lo­ped smart soft­ware for car sharing, carpoo­ling and auto­no­mous fleet manage­ment opera­ti­ons. Over 20 million rides have alre­ady been arran­ged via the Ride­cell plat­form. “With our end-to-end inte­gra­tion, mobi­lity compa­nies and cities can quickly launch and expand their own car and ridesha­ring services in the market and increase their utiliza­tion” says Aarjav Trivedi, CEO Ride­cell. With Ride­cell, DB sees the poten­tial to offer all forms of use for vehicle fleets united on one plat­form — car sharing, ridesha­ring and on-demand services, inclu­ding auto­no­mous vehic­les. This would allow trips to be even more targe­ted to meet custo­mer needs.

DB Digi­tal Ventures will provide around €100 million in venture capi­tal by 2019 to work with start­ups to promote inno­va­tions and disrup­tive busi­ness models in mobi­lity and logi­stics that will bene­fit DB custo­mers in the long term.