Judith Häberli

Judith Häberli, CGO and co-founder of Urban Connect as well as EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ 2023 Switzerland winner in the category "Emerging Entrepreneur", shares her motivation for starting a corporate mobility platform and explains why real change only happens when companies work together.

What inspired you to start a company in general and Urban Connect in particular?

I was very much inspired to solve problems that I felt hadn’t been tackled yet by other companies and I wanted to work on something that would have a positive impact on our environment.

It so happened that the co-founder was working in a big company that had e-bikes for their employees but wasn’t managing them in a very smart way at the time. We could see that the employees’ need for and usage of these e-bikes was very high, but the company needed support to manage their bikes effectively. That’s when we decided that this task should be taken care of by a company like Urban Connect. It means that companies can focus on their core business while we look after the fleet and ensure that their employees’ mobility needs are being met.

Your motto is ”Change Mobility – Change the World!” Is it difficult to stand for such a big promise?

I wouldn’t say it’s a promise, it’s more of a North Star vision for us as a team to work towards together with our clients. We don’t promise to change the world – I don’t think any company alone can do that. We need to all change together. But we do believe that by changing the mobility behavior of our clients’ employees, we enable clients to reduce their emissions. And if lots of companies work together with us, or companies like us, they will have a bigger combined impact on the world.

Operating in a dynamic environment such as mobility requires a lot of innovation. What are you planning next and will AI play a role?

We saw a lot of innovation last year, which was a good thing, but now we want to use this year to consolidate and really see the platform grow as our innovation comes to life at our clients’. We are currently still finishing a project around parking management so that employees can book parking spots on the company site not just on a monthly or yearly basis, but also daily or even hourly. Otherwise, we’re trying to focus our innovative powers to improve our work flows and the user experience for what we already have.

In terms of AI, we are using it more and more within the teams, but we’re not positioning ourselves as an AI company – that’s not what we are. We’re more about data science. We use client data, intelligence and our algorithm to improve mobility and to analyze the mobility behavior of clients’ employees. But we are aware that we will have to look deeply into different forms of AI for each team to keep pace with the competition.

Has Switzerland been a supportive environment for you as a startup? To what extent does Swissness play a role in your business?

Yes, I would say so. Here in Zurich, we’re very lucky to have such good universities, leading to a strong talent pool in Zurich and in Switzerland in general, which has to do with the country providing good education. We also have support by the government through loan guarantees for example so that we are able to have a bit more financial freedom.

Regarding the second question, we are not trying to ride a Swissness marketing campaign because we are a very international team. We have 30 plus employees from probably more than ten nationalities. I think there are some Swiss values that we want to embody, though, like being reliable and on time. We see ourselves more as a global company because we want to solve a global problem, not just a Swiss problem.

Which vehicle are we most likely to find you using?

A cargo bike. I live very close to the office and I have three kids. The cargo bike is basically our family vehicle. And if I go farther away, I usually take public transport unless it is very tricky to get there in which case I would rent one of the shared cars.