Published At: August 23, 2022
Check out the exclusive interview conducted by BUSINESSER with our CEO Jochem Verheul, who discussed smart mobility business in Asia and Europe, Blockchain technology, and work culture.
Fast forward to 2022, innovation has transported us from an era of horse-drawn carriages to supercars that run up to 300 kilometers an hour. Because of the vast growing types of mobility networks, globalization became a reality—however, the downside of this: Emissions.
Mobility is not just about comfort and luxury, but it's an essential need. Proper mobility networks open any trade, business, and education opportunities and can serve as a solution that mitigates environmental conditions.
Jochem Verhuel is a technologist and an entrepreneur that has worked on building scalable mobility applications in the past decade with his company, Itsavirus.In continents like Asia and Europe, where Itsavirus is based, there presents a tremendous opportunity to quickly transition cities from no-tech to advanced intelligent towns. The jump is certainly drastic but feasible.
Unlike the majority of tech developments we observe coming out of Silicon Valley and the United States, Jochem has a different outlook on the future of technology and mobility.
In Asia, he sees the opportunity for technology to change an entire society rather than be an addition to it.
Have you been surprised by how well your solutions have been received? For example, Europe has encouraged green technology and legislation supporting it.
Europe has existing infrastructure and approaches to mobility challenges that work.
Implementing new tools, especially in mobility, always takes time, and time is money. I don't think change is moving fast enough. For example, Amsterdam has done a phenomenal job getting cars out of the city with bike implementation programs. Still, people often forget that the process started in the sixties.
Whereas, in Asia, this is a drastically different society. It has the potential to leapfrog more so than other areas. This is a brilliant position to be in. In the last few years, there's been a significant change with these electrical fleets of motorbikes. They are more accessible and cost-friendly, which encourages large-scale adoption.
It's something that's already used in daily life but at a fraction of the cost and practically zero emissions.
Seamless ways to move from one area to the next is the goal of these technologies. One topic heavily discussed in the media and academic circles is the role blockchain can play in improving society.
I'm interested to hear your insights on the blockchain. What facilitated this move towards using blockchain to facilitate transactions for transportation? Can you talk briefly about what you learned from the Blockchain Bus project? (VMC) And feel free to discuss any other current blockchain projects you're working on.
The blockchain bus was my startup. It was a venture incubated within the walls of our own company. Unfortunately, we had to shut it down because it was too expensive.
From a technical perspective, we had a small team and a limited budget, yet we could still pull it off while building everything from scratch, including our hardware.
Having a proof concept versus a production state environment (with industry-grade tech) is a huge step, but we proved it could be done. From a technical perspective, it's feasible.
However, the complete migration of your company to an open system takes time and a lot of money.
It's also a political issue: the philosophy was that moving around the planet should be done so that companies' profits are logical. I wasn't very keen on the current exportation model for how people moved. Take Uber, for example, they took their position in the taxi industry, and if you're an Uber driver, you're just barely making a living.
In my perspective, it wasn't fair, so our mission was to create an open, backend network in which anyone could build their application.
It's a radically different approach, so the transition to get there will take a while. Ethically people were interested, but the actual implementation is a different story.
That's why I'm excited to be in Indonesia. Countries like this have the potential to leapfrog from old systems to a completely different, more efficient system.
Digitalization is out of control, which is in our favor.
We have another blockchain venture MelX, and under there, we're building a game and a peer-to-peer marketplace for electric vehicles in Indonesia. It's super interesting from a technical perspective and an ethical one.
It's a technology that gives power to the people. It'll be cool to look back 30 years from now and think, 'wow, we were at the beginning of something. Like the internet all over again.'
"Countries like this have the potential to leapfrog from old systems to a completely different, more efficient system. Digitalization is out of control, which is in our favor."
To be continued (part 2)
