Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures starts to splash cash on Mobility Startups

Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures – set up to invest in mobility startups – invests in ride-sharing platform SPLT and US-based startup GoKid.

We pretty much missed it, but in March last year Jaguar Land Rover created InMotion Ventures Ltd (and subsequently, for that matter, InMotion Ventures 1, InMotion Ventures 2 and InMotion Ventures 3) with the aim of getting stuck in to building Apps and on-demand services for travel and transport.

At the time, Adrian Hallmark, Group Strategy Director at JLR and the man in charge of InMotion, said the aim was to develop new Apps and on-demand services, garnering insights from in-depth research about problems which need solving, developing the solution and launching the product. 

That, at least, was the initial pitch, but it seems InMotion Ventures is now about buying-in the solutions to mobility problems (real and perceived), with InMotion Ventures now splashing some cash on it first two start-up investments.

First up is an investment in GoKid, a US based ride-sharing platform for families to work out how to share taking their children to school, after school activities and the endless taxi service parents provide their ungrateful offspring.

InMotions’s investment isn’t huge – the entire seed funding round was only $1 million – but if it all comes together – and it’s a logical and potentially useful App – then more funding will be needed.

Before the ink had dried on the GoKid deal, InMotion jumped in to an investment in ride-sharing platform SPLT, which delivers a carpool service for employees of big organisations to make their commutes cheaper and easier. Think Peter Kay without the fun.

No doubt we’ll be hearing more about InMotion’s investments – aimed at Seed to Series B funding – as it aims to invest in 10-15 early stage startups this year.

Some of which, hopefully, will come from the UK.