With your brother Adrien, you have developed alternative mobility solutions for companies and their employees. In your view, what needs and challenges of businesses are addressed by the solutions offered by Hooba?
Indeed, with Hooba, we provide companies and organisations of all kinds with bicycles and scooters to be shared among employees. We also provide all the necessary services to facilitate sharing and ensure the proper functioning of these vehicles, such as connected locks, a mobile app, fleet maintenance services, and usage reports.
Our solution is designed so that employers do not have to worry about these bikes, and employees can use them safely. This allows, for example, employees who do not have the possibility to commute by bike to use them for their daytime travel, and others to carry out or test the home-to-work commute.
In terms of needs, we currently observe that companies are looking to reduce their carbon footprint, and mobility is a key element of this, particularly in the service sector: travel and car parking are becoming increasingly costly and complicated, and the generation entering the labour market is less attracted to cars as part of the salary package. For companies, attracting and retaining this new talent is, however, an important challenge.
What are the major developments that you think will shape your sector by 2030?
Today, companies are heavily focused on electrification in mobility. However, this does not provide any solution to traffic flow or parking issues.
For me, more and more employees will gradually continue to leave their cars behind to use public transport, bicycles, or shared vehicles more. I do not think that by 2030 the change will be drastic, but rather that it will take a generation to see a significant effect.
The generalisation of teleworking, the fact that the younger generation grew up with bike-sharing systems, the ever-growing awareness of environmental challenges, and the gradual change in tax incentives all, in my view, support this underlying trend, which will only increase.
You have just completed a fundraising round via the Economic Transition Fund. What projects and investments do you want to carry out with this financing?
The financing obtained allows us to invest in equipment and systems to improve our operational efficiency, as well as in human resources to develop our activity. Part of the funding is also intended to finance the bicycles we provide to our clients.
What are, for you, the advantages of collaborating with a financial partner such as finance&invest.brussels?
There are several advantages to working with F&I, and in particular the Transition Fund in our case: first of all, it allows us to access financing under “reasonable” market conditions. Secondly, the impact of the project is genuinely taken into account in the analysis of the application.
There is also a wide range of financing options and a willingness to propose the solution best suited to the business model. And finally, it also helps to gain the trust of other banking institutions, and even potential clients.
You too want to reduce your company’s carbon footprint? Contact us by email at info@finance.brussels mentioning the economic transition fund in the subject line, or via the “request financing” button available on all pages of our website.
