Malaysia-listed Yinson Holdings and SMRT Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Singapore’s public transport operator SMRT Corp Ltd, announced they will co-invest a “multi-million dollar amount” in Singapore’s autonomous vehicle tech startup MooVita.
Lead investor Yinson, an energy infrastructure and technology company, entered into an agreement with SMRT Ventures for the investment, the companies said in a joint statement.
The investment marks Yinson’s first foray into mobility — one of the three segments, besides marine and energy, that the group has earmarked for Yinson Green Technologies Division (YGT), its newly-established, wholly-owned Singapore subsidiary.
The co-investment, part of MooVita’s Series A funding, aims to accelerate the development, commercialisation, and international expansion of MooVita’s driverless solutions; beginning with the deployment of safe and comfortable driverless solutions for public transportation and the urban environment, the companies said.
These plans are aligned with the “Sustainable Singapore Blueprint”, which sets out to achieve a cleaner and greener transport system in the country by 2030.Yinson group executive vice president, new ventures and technology, Eirik Barclay said that the investment was in line with YGT’s ambitions of accelerating the global transition to a low carbon economy through green technology investments. “We look forward to working closely with MooVita to develop and roll out technologies that can help to mitigate some of the most pressing issues faced by the transportation industry today – road accidents, carbon emissions, and traffic congestion,” he said.
“Our plan is to replace existing infrastructure and develop innovative business solutions in order to make transportation sustainable through the adoption of clean and environmentally-sound technologies,” said Barclay, adding that there are also future plans to operationalise the technology in Malaysia.
MooVita co-founder and COO Dilip Limbu said, “With this injection of capital and business acumen, alongside Yinson and SMRT Ventures, we’ll focus on advancing our driverless technologies, building a fleet of driverless shuttle buses and safe on-road operations, expediting the deployment of the MooVita’s driverless public transport solutions across Asian urbanscapes, starting from Singapore and Malaysia.”
Established in 2016, MooVita is a high-tech startup specialised in designing and deploying roadworthy autonomous vehicles in urban cities worldwide. MooVita is currently developing an industry-leading, component-based driverless software solution, which transforms various vehicle types into versatile autonomous vehicles for multitudinous driving conditions and applications, such as first or last-mile transportation, logistic transportation, agriculture, and utility solutions. MooVita is headquartered in Singapore, with offices in Malaysia and India.
MooVita’s early investors include Pioneer Smart Sensing Innovations Corporation, a consolidated subsidiary of Pioneer Corporation, SEEDS Capital, and GreenMeadows Accelerator.