Yulu, a technology-driven mobility platform, provides an eco-friendly UMaaS (Urban Mobility as a Service) for the first mile, last mile, and short distance commute.
“Cities can be better designed for being adaptive to micromobility by making short-mile and intra-city commute part of urban planning, having dedicated cycle lanes, ecosystem & adoption enabling policies and administrative support for new-age mobility solutions like Shared Mobility and clean mobility, etc., says, Yulu CEO Amit Gupta in an exclusive interview with Geospatial World.
How does micromobility fit in for the requirements of future smart cities, and how can cities be designed to be more adaptive to it?
Urbanization is a mega trend that has picked up in the last few decades and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Cities have become the hubs for economic growth and result in a huge influx of people from rural & semi-urban areas to urban centers in pursuit of a better livelihood.
City planners are becoming increasingly aware of this phenomenon and are trying to mold the city infrastructure to cater to the growing pressure of mobility needs. It would be impractical to expect all legacy infrastructural issues to be resolved by creating all-new solutions.
ALSO READ: London’s Tree Covered Areas Most Desirable Places to Live
The best approach is to look at solutions that are future-ready and can co-exist with reasonable upgrades of existing infrastructure. One such solution is micro-mobility. As most cities priorities high-speed & comfortable mass public transit systems, like Metros & AC buses, technology-driven shared micromobility options can not only make them seamless but also more usable alternatives.
Hence, technological solutions are the need of the hour for optimized and efficient use of resources in urban areas. Micromobility and multi-modal connectivity like Shared e-mobility go hand-in-hand with urban growth and smart cities, as they solve most of the daily commute needs of individuals and mitigates the stress on urban resources.
Shared e-mobility also reduces the pollution level in cities and has the added benefit of being a vital connectivity link for public transport systems and metros which is the commute lifeline for a large portion of the populace in these cities.
What are the main challenges faced by shared e-mobility sector, and how do you tackle them?
One of the main challenges faced by Shared e-mobility is access to easily accessible and affordable land parcels to create a dense network of vehicles and corresponding EV ecosystem, i.e., in Yulu’s case of Shared e-mobility, a dense network of customer-facing battery swapping stations that is always within the reach of the users.
Other things like technological integrations of private and public transportation players for a seamless, efficient and relevant ecosystem are also needed. Policy focus on mobility is also primarily on the manufacturing and ownership side, so there is a need to proactively encourage and incentivize new and efficient technology-based solutions like shared micro-mobility which solve problems from first-principles and have a multiplier improvement.
Post covid-19 pandemic, there is a massive rise in usage, ownership and shared option of micromobility. What do you think can be the major reasons?
In the initial days of COVID, the need for personal (micro)mobility was fueled by safety concerns as the effort was to minimize contact and avoid public transport.
During this time, Yulu saw high adoption of its service even though it was shared mobility, as it was a ‘solo’ commute and we were sanitizing our vehicles every few hours giving riders the assurance they needed. Pandemic also massively transformed the work we did, how we worked and where we worked.
Need for physical travel reduced in white-collared jobs – so there was again a shift towards shared mobility options as it made economic sense. While in blue-collared jobs, the on-demand and delivery services segment exploded, adding a lot of workforce at the bottom of the pyramid that needed affordable last mile commute options.
A major reason in adoption of shared mobility, that too, clean mobility options is because of the low entry barrier for access to these services, and the relative affordability of Shared e-mobility when compared to fuel-run vehicles.
Hence, in a country like India, where a majority of the population don’t own a drivers licence, Shared LSEVs have seen an increase in user adoption and usage by diverse consumer cohorts, including female delivery executives, delivery executives for food delivery services like Zomato and Swiggy, intra-city delivery service executives like Dunzo, instant-commerce delivery executives like those working for Zepto and BigBasket, and self-employed individuals, and individuals working for start-ups like Urban Company.
What are the major micromobility trends you notice in different regions, where you have established your product/service?
Shared e-mobility has emerged as a major driver of micromobility in urban areas. One of the trends we saw during the pandemic is the wide scale adoption of Shared e-mobility by delivery executives as Shared Mobility forms an affordable and sustainable livelihood option for them.
Another use case of Shared Mobility are daily commuters and office-goers who don’t own a vehicle of their own. Most of them are new to the cities they work and a trend among the young workers today is not to own a personal vehicle immediately, but to switch to more affordable options like lease ownership or pay-per-use mobility like Shared Mobility.
ALSO READ: Significance of Cybersecurity Certification for Drone Systems
Micromobility has transformed the concept of last-mile delivery in a lot of places. Do you think micromobility has made logistics service flexible?
Shared e-mobility has indeed made logistics both efficient and agile. This has led to emergence of new business models that use the power of technology, aggregation and scale to provide never-before customer experiences by transforming how delivery is done.
Now, many companies rely on a partner-network of delivery executives who operate in micro-neighborhoods delivering tens of packages every day to customers. Also, this has led to the emergence of micromobility solution/ service providers like Yulu who offer LSEVs that have a unisex design that can be used by both male and female riders, and have a low entry barrier. Further, there is no need for having a driving license for the use of Yulu EVs which suits a large portion of our population.
An efficient market has been created with both supply and demand pools in place which gives all participants much higher flexibility and opportunity.
According to a June report by NITI Aayog, gig work will employ about 9.9 million people in India in 2022-23, a 45% increase from 2019-20. Further, the gig workforce is expected to reach 23.5 million by 2029-30, forming 6.7% of India’s non-agricultural workforce or 4.1% of the total livelihood in the country.
Many of these gig workers take up delivery jobs and Shared Mobility forms, which is an affordable and sustainable option for them.
How can micromobility contribute to zero-emissions and ensure sustainability in urban spheres?
Shared e-mobility, that too clean and sustainable e-mobility solutions like Yulu reduces the need for private ownership of vehicles for intra-city commute and mitigates the stress on urban resources.
Along with this, EV-based micromobility improves air quality of the cities, reduces individual carbon footprint and uses technological solutions to solve urban commute challenges like traffic congestion and pollution by judicious and efficient use of resources by dense population communities, thus limiting the effects of climate change.
