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Tomás Veloso

Director, Micromobility @ Bolt

Tomás Veloso is a highly accomplished business professional with a strong academic background in economics and finance. Veloso has an MS in Finance from the prestigious Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from FEP - Faculdade de Economia da Universidade do Porto, and completed an Erasmus program at Dublin City University.

Veloso has held various high-level positions at well-known companies. He served as the Regional Manager of Micromobility at Bolt and the Regional Operations Manager for Germany, Switzerland, and Austria at Voi Technology. Additionally, Veloso was the Business & Market Strategist in the CEO's Office of WeDo Technologies and worked in Corporate Sales at Cabify. He also has experience in consulting, having worked as both an Analyst and Consultant at Aztec Money and as the CEO of FEP Junior Consulting.

In his several years of experience in the business world, Veloso has been responsible for developing and implementing operational strategies, managing market operations, and overseeing corporate sales. He also has a background in finance, having worked as an intern project at Santander Asset Management and taught Accountancy as a Teaching Assistant at ISCET.

Overall, Veloso is a highly experienced business professional with a diverse background that makes him an asset to any organization. His experience in strategy development, market operations, and corporate sales is valuable across many industries.

Highlights

Apr 4 · linkedin

Bicycles disrupting horse carriages? Thankfully, Paris is innovating with scooters.

When bicycles were first invented in the 19th century, critics advocated its ban claiming they were dangerous, would lead to an increase of accidents and, worst of all, would disrupt existing modes of transport, such as horse carriages. In the New York 1800s, there were restrictions on the use of bicycles in parks and requirements for cyclists to obtain licenses or attach a bell to their bicycles to warn pedestrians of their approach. Thankfully, innovation prevailed, regulation enabled growth and a healthy competition between companies led to safety improvements (brakes, tires, bells, etc). 'Life is like riding a bicycle.'

Fast forward to Paris 2023, after a referendum with 92% abstinence and a restricted voting system, a market with 15k scooters, +20m rides/ year and +€50m revenue combined business will not be renewed.

In June 2018, together with Stockholm and Lisbon, Paris became one of the first cities to allow scooters to be part of the mobility ecosystem. More than 20k scooters built for consumers (not sharing) were deployed by +12 companies, leading to littering scenarios, stolen hardware and sub-par safety.

One year later, Germany marked a significant shift by approving a Federal level regulation for scooters. Besides specific criteria on speed limit, lights, brakes, reflectors, size, no parking zones - insurance (3rd party liability) was finally a requirement. A new regulatory framework was followed by several countries, focused on safety, both for users and non-users, and looking for a well distributed public space system.

Industry matured and only a few companies remain - with significant developments in regards to hardware safety and durability, speed limit and improved parking based on geofencing, tandem and aggressive riding detection, anti-drunk driving detection, strict operational SLAs, sustainable metrics, etc.  To put it in perspective, how many accidents can be prevented if (only) 20% of scooter requirements would be implemented in cars?

Similarly as bicycles in the 19th century, cities started taking different approaches in regards to scooter regulation, looking to maximize the proven benefits (traffic reduction, replacement of short car trips, multimodality), while mitigating the existing challenges - safety and public space management, similar to car industry.

In Paris particularly, city officials invested in cycle lanes, parking while simultaneously commissioning a public tender, awarding 3 exclusive licenses to scooter companies. After a costly tender process for the tax-payers, the intended solution was to 'improve safety, contribute to the calming of public spaces and work according to high social and ecological criteria.'

Arguably, Paris has identified the problem but failed to implement an effective regulation to solve and enforce it. As a consequence, instead of driving innovation is now moving backwards to the 19th century.

Jun 16 · linkedin

Growth goes hand in hand with safety and responsibility so after scaling 5x YoY the number of rides, Bolt worked effortlessly to decrease the injury rate by 26%. In practice, it means less than 6 injuries per each 1 million km ridden.

Important safety streams: • Introduce a Beginner Mode, which caps the max speed for a first time user to learn how to ride (highest risk group for accident) • Introduce software and firmware features to detect and prevent tandem riding (2+ people in the same vehicle), intoxicated riding (via cognitive reaction test) and dangerous driving (via skid detection) • Achieve ISO 45001 certification for Safety Management Systems, guaranteeing design, maintenance and safety of our micromobility fleet by recognised standards • Encourage responsible parking, focusing on community members and vulnerable groups • Education with ride tips, safety instructions, introduction to local traffic rules

Despite efforts to make Bolt vehicles as safe as possible, the unfortunate reality is that accidents still happen. This is why, together with our insurance partners, Personal Accident Insurance and Rider General Liability are available.

Related Questions

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Tomás Veloso
Tomás Veloso, photo 1
Tomás Veloso, photo 2
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Estonia