Populus

Populus provides city municipalities with mobility data and tools to manage shared mobility and parking policies in cities. Populus’s mobility management tool specializes in providing data on micromobility solutions such as bikes, scooters, and mopeds to help formulate policies and monitor compliance. In 2020, Populus expanded its services to include a Street and curb manager platform, providing data on curb parking demand to help plan and create street policies and curbside parking policies and communicate them to relevant stakeholders including map platforms, shared mobility operators, and autonomous vehicles. Populus applies machine learning (ML) techniques to deliver insights, leveraging data from 40+ micromobility operators covering more than 150 million shared mobility trips.

Key customers and partnerships

As of January 2022, Populus was available in more than 80 cities on 4 continents including cities in the US, Israel, and Brazil.

In 2020, Populus was selected for an initiative funded by the US Department of Transportation to improve micromobility safety. In October 2021, Populus was selected for Phase II of the initiative, which will be expanded to 15 US cities including Cleveland, Lexington, and Charlotteville. In June 2022, Populus was awarded a contract to manage the city of Chicago’s shared Scooter and bikes program . 

Funding and financials

In August 2022, the company raised USD 11 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Zero Infinity Partners and Climactic. It will use the funds for the development of its existing suite as well as its proprietary curb management software. It also planned to increase its headcount by 2x from 25 over the next year. Additionally, Populus reported that it had launched pilot projects in several European cities and planned to focus on congestion pricing in future. The round follows its USD 5 million seed funding in March 2021 led by Storm Ventures and Magna.