The startup that helps to go from home to work is reconverted for the era of the coronavirus

 

The idea of ​​creating Journify it occurred to Ignacio Zaballos out of necessity. “I live on the outskirts of Valencia and taking my car every day involved quite significant economic costs in gasoline at the end of the month, “he says. So, inspired in part by the success of BlaBlaCar, he devised a mobile application that would allow workers in a company car sharing to reduce expenses and, incidentally, reduce the environmental impact of travel.

Two years later, Zaballos is the CEO of a company with more than 18,000 users and I expect to close the financial year 2020 with revenue of 4.5 million euros. Although, again out of necessity, he has been forced to reinvent himself to soften the effects of the coronavirus about its main line of business, now that many companies are opting for telecommuting.

The founding team of this Valencian startup met at an international Google hackathon, a meeting for computer programmers. “Coincidentally, they had the same problem as me with travel, and that motivated us even more to want to create a company to solve it,” says Zaballos. “That happened in November 2016 but it wasn’t until a year later that we really started working.” The company currently has nine employees.

As he explains, the solution provided by Journify through its ‘app’ for mobile devices allows employees to “can share a car on their daily commutes and manage your routines in a simple and intuitive way. It’s like a BlaBlaCar for every day. “Once the point of origin and destination, the number of seats and the price are marked, passengers can reserve those that best suit them.

In parallel, companies have the possibility of having all the information generated by these shared routes, organized in different parameters. “From there they can extract mobility patterns to improve your commute plans and also data on sustainability, such as the reduction of CO2 emissions “, says Zaballos.

Journify began collaborating with universities, including the Complutense, Rey Juan Carlos and Polità © cnica of Madrid, and also the UPV of Valencia. Later, it made the leap to the corporate world, incorporating Amazon, Grupo Valeo, Santa LucÃa or the business city Atalayas de Alicante into its client portfolio. “So far practically everything we have done has been organically: 80% of customers find us themselves, thanks to our positioning and the great need that exists in the market “.

The startup has just closed a financing round of 440,000 euros in which the ‘Venture Lab’ B4Motion and the businessman David Cantolla, founder of Teknoland or Zinkia Entertainment and one of the creators of the children’s series Pocoyo, have participated. “We grew 35% month to month together before the pandemic. Now we continue to grow, but we have dropped to 5% due to the effect that covid-19 is having on companies and the fact that the vast majority of them are preferring teleworking “, says the CEO of Journify.

Faced with this situation, the company has reacted “adapting the entire application to the coronavirus, to help companies offer alternative and reliable methods of transport. “Because, Zaballos argues,” 30% of the positives in workers occur during commuting between home and work, especially when traveling in the middle of large crowds “. His proposal are “controlled environments”, favoring car sharing only among company employees, limiting the maximum number of seats to two people per vehicle, sitting diagonally to maintain social distance and with the obligation to wear a mask.

Además, explains, “we have a traceability system in order, in the case of contagions, to be able to establish adequate preventive measures. We also generate travel certificates so we can show them to the relevant authorities in case of confinement. “

Other new lines of business include fleet connectivity to collect data and determine financial savings and shuttle bus services and vehicle subscription, whether it be cars, motorcycles or scooters. “We are focusing on staple companies or large factories that they cannot carry out their work remotely, “says Zaballos.

Regarding institutional support for companies during the health crisis, he criticizes how in his opinion “we have not received all the aid that we would have liked. Being registered as a software development company, although our market is really mobility, the administration has not even wanted to understand that part. It has not focused on the solutions we offer or done to understand the situation we face, when even today travel is still restricted. “

There are still “complicated months”, he predicts, “especially seeing how lockdowns are taking place throughout Europe and perhaps also in Spain.” Companies are the first to want to go back to normal, he adds, “because are noticing how remote work reduces their productivity levels. But until there is a vaccine, the mobility sector still faces difficult times. “

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