The RATP group launches the 3rd edition of its start-up gas pedal

24 janvier 2022

On January 10, 2022, the RATP group announced the launch of the 3rd edition of its start-up gas pedal dedicated to new mobility and better urban living. The five winning start-ups will benefit from a six-month business acceleration to test and deploy their solutions and services on the networks operated by the RATP group. Applications are open until March 5.

RATP, an international group

From buses in London to streetcars in Brest, Tucson, Hong Kong and Florence, and including the automatic metro in Doha, Qatar, and soon in Riyadh, the RATP group is present in 14 countries on four continents and is the world’s third largest urban transport operator. It employs around 63,000 people to develop, operate, maintain and modernise innovative public transport systems and thus meet people’s mobility needs (metro, streetcar, urban and intercity buses, regional trains, sightseeing, maritime shuttles, transport on demand and cables). The RATP Group’s ambition is to be the world leader in sustainable and connected urban mobility and to establish itself as the preferred partner for smart cities.

The 3rd edition of the RATP group’s start-up gas pedal

For this third edition, the group has decided to select five start-ups. Candidates are invited to apply until 5 March 2022 via the dedicated platform. After being pre-selected, the start-ups will have to defend their project in the form of a pitch in front of the Group’s business experts in March and early April, based on the following five themes

New technologies for industry: making life in the city easier and optimizing travel
Attractiveness and digitalization of professions: designing the company of the future for a better employee experience
New technologies for a connected industry: accelerating the Group’s technological transformation to meet the industrial challenges of tomorrow.
Acting for the ecological transition of cities: commit to a better quality of city by developing urban integration programs.
Mobility for all: promoting access to transportation for all and strengthening social cohesion.

Selection criteria

Maturity of the solution: level of implementation of the solution, customer references, team.
Ability to industrialize the start-up solution: reliability, sustainability of the solution, ability to deploy internationally.
Relevance of the solution chosen by the participants, in comparison with the Challenge.
Ability to present the start-up solution in an innovative way at the RATP Lab.

In April, the jury will unveil the five winning start-ups, who will receive six months of support to test and deploy their solutions across all the networks operated by the RATP group.

A six-month support programme

From May onwards, the winning start-ups will have access to advice from RATP’s business experts, as well as tailor-made support from the Startup Leadership Program, a community of entrepreneurs.
The programme will enable the selected start-ups to pitch to RATP Capital Innovation, the Group’s investment fund, as a priority in the event of a fundraising round. The Group will finance the field trials required to develop the proposed solutions.
RATP will also provide access to the Urbanopolis laboratory, its network of innovation facilities, and a week-long communication campaign in the Paris metro.
Finally, the winning start-ups will benefit from the visibility offered by the RATP Group’s stand at VivaTech 2022 (June 15-18).

The winning start-ups from the first two editions

The 12 start-ups selected in the two previous editions are

Fieldbox.ai optimizes the management of RER B rolling stock in real time thanks to artificial intelligence. This solution helps the dispatchers in their daily decisions of train assignment, impacting the traffic fluidity and the maintenance of the equipment.
Bubble VR is developing a new solution to easily create video tutorials on strategic know-how and to share them between peers. This solution is currently being tested on the Casablanca tramway.
Jungle Bus maps formal and informal transportation networks around the world.
BulldozAir simplifies the management and monitoring of the Group’s worksites by industrializing a collaborative management platform. This solution is currently being deployed among RATP employees, notably on the renovation sites of metro lines 4 and 6, and tramway line 1.
Geovelo contributes to intermodality and offers a secure guidance system for cyclists. The calculator developed by the start-up has proven itself and has already been integrated into the RATP Dev networks in France.
Bioxegy is inspired by the fins of humpback whales to rethink the fan blades installed in metros and thus improve air renewal in underground spaces. This innovation is part of the ambitious action plan proposed by the RATP to Île-de-France Mobilités on indoor air quality
M-CADOR offers the automation of visual tasks thanks to artificial intelligence; a predictive maintenance proposed by the start-up that allows to detect damage upstream, and thus avoid unavailability.
Uppli, the community for sharing multimodal journeys between travellers with “Jaamme”.
Team Stories accelerates and strengthens employee engagement, regardless of distance, thanks to the “stories” format; currently used by 1,000 RATP maintenance agents to facilitate the sharing of best practices.
Isybot, collaborative robots to facilitate manual tasks;
Viibe, the collaborative video assistance platform for technical support and maintenance operations by RATP agents
Nano-Disinfection, a nanotechnological surface treatment to ensure continuous disinfection 24/7, without the use of chemicals, currently being tested with the RATP group’s test and measurement laboratory