SkedGo: Redefining the Inclusive Transport Ecosystem Through Integrated Mobility Technology

Click Here to Download this Transformational Growth Leadership Interview with John Nuutinen, CEO & Co-founder of SkedGo, and Sandra Witzel, CMO & Board Director at SkedGo.

In this discussion, Geraldine Priya A, Growth Expert and Research Manager, Shared Mobility, at Frost & Sullivan speaks with John Nuutinen, CEO & Co-founder, and Sandra Witzel, CMO & Board Director of SkedGo, about the evolving role of integrated mobility technology in building transport ecosystems that serve communities of every size. The conversation explores the shift from Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) to Mobility-as-a-Feature, the rise of TripGo Mobility AI, and a long-standing commitment to accessible, inclusive design. Together, these forces are shaping how transit agencies, local governments, and corporates are rethinking the way people move. Getting people from A to B requires connecting multiple modes, operators, and data sources without friction. SkedGo has been working on that challenge since 2009. The company now serves transit agencies, local governments, corporate mobility programs, and community transport operators across Australia, Europe, the UK, the US, and Japan. With TripGo Mobility AI in active development, SkedGo is expanding journey planning from a transactional query into a continuous, personalized mobility experience.

Transformation in Action: SkedGo’s Journey from a Consumer App to Global Business-to-Business (B2B) Platform

Geraldine Priya A: What are the three transformative megatrends driving the evolution of the integrated mobility solutions, and where is the industry standing right now?

John Nuutinen: The first is the evolution of the integrated mobility model itself. When we started in 2009, we built a journey planner that was multi-modal, intermodal, and preference-based, giving users the ability to choose transport modes based on whether they wanted to reduce carbon, cost, or time. When mobility as a service was coined in 2016, we realised we already had the technical capabilities to meet those needs. The space has since moved again, from mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) to mobility as a feature, and increasingly to integrated mobility solutions.

The second is localisation. The most significant opportunity is not in large capital cities that already have functioning transit ecosystems. It is in middle-sized cities, rural areas, and underserved communities where people have never had access to these capabilities.

Sandra Witzel: The third is accessibility, moving from an afterthought to a design requirement. The technology must be embedded within a much broader value proposition: not simply providing a journey planner, but genuinely solving a problem for a community, a city, or a corporate fleet, in a way that is inclusive. That is where the sustainable model lives, and where the industry is heading.

Collaboration Over Competition: How SkedGo Is Building Its Ecosystem

Geraldine Priya A: SkedGo sits at the intersection of transit agencies, tech providers, and corporate clients. In a space where consolidation is happening fast, how are you staying ahead of competition?

John Nuutinen: We do not look at other players in this space as competition, because this is fundamentally a collaborative domain. What started as a simple journey planning exercise has become a very complex ecosystem. It is rare that one company can deliver all the different modules or features that operators need, so integration is the norm, not the exception.

What is interesting now is that ticketers, companies like Masabi and Cubic, are leaning into the capabilities we have developed. They want to deliver a better user experience, real-time data, and preference-based planning. The consolidation we are seeing is a convergence of capabilities, with remaining players working together to build better outcomes for users.

Sandra Witzel: Our growth has been largely organic, extending into sectors we did not always anticipate. Community transport in the US, for example, is now a significant area for us. We are working with Feonix Catch a Ride Network and providing the technology for their services. That has pushed us to develop our already specialised technology even further to suit that environment.

“Before, we were selling a concept. Now, we can show an organisation how much they are saving, how many car journeys they are replacing, and what the carbon impact looks like.”

— John Nuutinen, CEO & Co-founder, SkedGo

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Capitalizing on Disruptive Technologies: TripGo Mobility AI and the End of Transactional Journey Planning

Geraldine Priya A: You are building TripGo Mobility AI at a time when every mobility platform is making an AI claim. Where is AI genuinely moving the needle for SkedGo?

Sandra Witzel: AI offers a lot of potential, but it needs to work in alignment with our company values, not just as a productivity tool but as something that reshapes what we are doing and how we are doing it. TripGo Mobility AI is a game-changer for journey planning because it introduces memory, deep personalisation, and a knowledge base that the user can tap into in a far more conversational and proactive way.

One example is disruption management. Right now, disruption management in public transport is really difficult and not very user-friendly. People experience the disruption but then do not know what to do. When you plug AI into that alongside our real-time routing and local transport integrations, it can figure out what the user needs to do and tell them the best solution for their very specific requirements at that specific moment. We are moving away from a generic experience towards something deeply personalised.

John Nuutinen: The corporate mobility segment is another area where AI is particularly well suited. We can quantify value in ways we could not in the early days. Before, we were selling a concept. Now, we can show an organisation how much they are saving, how many car journeys they are replacing, and what the carbon impact looks like. That shift, from concept to quantified outcome, is where AI supercharges what we were already doing.

Best Practices: Accessibility As a Core Design Input, Not a Feature

Geraldine Priya A: SkedGo holds a B Corp certification and has made accessibility central to how it builds. How does that commitment actually show up in the way you approach innovation?

Sandra Witzel: Our approach to innovation always starts with the user who is hardest to serve. Accessibility is genuinely in the DNA of this company. One example is the work we do with Leicester City Council on their “Choose How You Move” programme. As part of their accessibility and inclusivity work, we built a Lit Routing feature – nighttime walking routes that prioritise streets covered by lighting and CCTV, so that people can navigate the city after dark with greater confidence. The data on personal safety makes the need stark: one in two women report feeling unsafe walking alone at night in a busy public place. A feature like this does not just improve a journey – it changes whether someone makes that journey at all.

Now, with AI, the possibilities are extending even further. The Leicester work also illustrates the broader challenge: there is little point giving someone a wheelchair-accessible route when the actual destination itself is not accessible. So we are moving towards a more place-based approach, where AI can hold a conversation with the user, access all the relevant data, and account for every dimension of the journey – not just how to get there, but whether the whole experience is genuinely usable for that person.

John Nuutinen: What is also exciting is seeing small and underserved communities adopt these capabilities. A rural location or an underserved community does not need tens of millions of dollars to benefit from integrated mobility technology. A small town can see real value. That is a direction of innovation that is often overlooked when the conversation stays focused on capital cities and large transit agencies.

“In the UK, the transport accessibility gap stands at 38%, meaning people with disabilities are making almost 40% fewer trips than those without disabilities. We want to play a meaningful part in improving this situation, using our technology solutions.”

—Sandra Witzel, CMO & Board Director at SkedGo

Innovative Business Models: Monetization and the Shift from Revenue-first to Value-first Thinking

Geraldine Priya A: MaaS has seen more exits than success stories on the monetization front. What is the real roadblock, and has SkedGo found a model that actually holds?

Sandra Witzel: The monetisation question is the most persistent one we face. There was a widespread expectation that MaaS would generate straightforward, direct revenue — and that is simply not how integrated mobility works. It is part of why we, and the industry more broadly, moved towards talking about mobility as a feature rather than a service to be sold. The value we deliver shows up in outcomes: a local authority reducing transport-related social exclusion, a corporate cutting its employees’ car dependency, a community transport operator reaching passengers it could not reach before. None of that maps neatly onto a revenue line, and organisations that went looking for one — without first asking what problem they were actually solving and for whom — found it very hard to sustain themselves. That is why a number of players have exited. What has kept SkedGo here is a deliberate focus on being genuinely useful to the client in front of us, rather than chasing a business model that the sector was never structured to support.

John Nuutinen: And we are starting to see that usefulness reflected in commercial terms. Monetisation is working — it just looks different depending on the client. Cubic’s Umo platform is a strong example. We are operating across 30 locations with them. The value shows up as a better user experience, which translates into more ticket sales and deeper user value. In corporate mobility, businesses trying to get employees out of private cars, reduce their costs, and improve their carbon ratings can see exactly what they are getting and they pay accordingly.

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Growth Opportunity Focus: AI-native Journeys, Modular Growth, and the Cities That Come Next

Geraldine Priya A: You are serving everyone from  Feonix’s community transport network to corporate mobility programs in Japan. What does the next five years look like, and how big is the ambition?

John Nuutinen: What I want to see is our solutions operating in cities of every size around the world, where people have access to these capabilities in a simple, affordable way. We point to Phoenix and to examples in Australia and the UK, but what we are really working towards demonstrating that a city does not need a mega-city budget to benefit from integrated mobility technology. The B Corp certification we hold is not a marketing statement. It reflects what we are actually trying to do.

In terms of product direction, we are deepening our core business while building out TripGo Mobility AI and looking for growth opportunities. We may also see diversification of modules to deliver targeted solutions to different audiences. Our dispatch capabilities for volunteer drivers and analytics tools for urban planners are early examples of how the core journey planning technology is generating data and insights that have standalone value in ways we are only beginning to explore.

Sandra Witzel: A lot of the features we have built that may seem specialist are genuinely useful to a much broader audience. The next phase is letting those capabilities reach the people who need them, not just the select communities where we have been deploying them.

Closing Reflections: Technology in Service of People

The conversation with John and Sandra keeps returning to the same theme: the technology is not the point. The outcomes are. What SkedGo has been building since 2009 is a platform that allows cities, transit agencies, corporates, and community organizations to configure integrated mobility around the people they serve — not around what the technology can theoretically do.

As AI continues to reshape how journey planning works, the companies that will lead are not those with the most sophisticated models. They are the ones that can connect AI capability to a genuine understanding of what a specific community needs, and build the trust required for users to rely on it. SkedGo’s track record across inclusive design, modular deployment, and outcome-based partnerships is a foundation that few competitors have taken the time to build.