The Story Behind Laureti & Icona’s Partnership and How it Will Change the Future of Travel
68 flights, 14 countries and over 40 business meetings. Between each flight, there were multiple legs of car journeys across urban and inter-city destinations largely navigated through a string of traffic jams, delays and cancellations. That was the life of Marcus Paleti, CEO of Laureti Group, during the third quarter of 2019. And he described that experience as “unfailingly punishing in all aspects of life”.
The business model of Laureti was then focused on the production of electric vehicles. But things were soon going to take an unexpected turn. With two high profile meetings scheduled in the space of 2 days, the Laureti team presented their project at the Élysée Palace upon the invitation from the President’s office. In the next 40 hours, another meeting was scheduled at the Prime Minister’s advisor office in India. The team would turn up 17 minutes late to that meeting which was nearly canceled. To say the least, the meeting in India didn’t turn out to be as productive as they expected. Months of preparation and planning did not yield to anything but a 23 hour wasted round trip.
It would take Marcus months to recover. Meanwhile, he couldn’t ignore his inner voices of frustration which pointed to the fragmentation, the stress and the disconnect in their travel that would cost him a business opportunity. He knew that his experience was far from unique. Soon, the Laureti founder started researching and gathering data; talking to other business travelers, general commuters and car users to learn about their experiences in their travels. What he found was shocking and scary.
Any regular travel whether local or international, lengthy or frequent, public transportation or cars on demand, seems to correlate between the time spent in the travel and the impact on physical, social and behavioral health risks. 7 in 10 traveling for work had high stress lifestyles. 6 out of 10 had significantly higher claims than their non-traveler colleagues. Lifestyle risks include higher consumption of alcohol, suicide rates and risk of depletion in effectiveness and flexibility. Risk of divorce was 65% higher and 18% shorter career spans than the non-traveling jobs.
To Marcus’s perspective, there is a compelling and urgent problem that no one seems to solve. So, the founder’s will, the best minds of Laureti and the money from the new investors were put to work to find a solution.
In 2020, Laureti reincarnated as a “mobility tech” company that is focused on the passenger experience. Powered by its industry-first technology, MiRA.OS, Laureti is developing business cabins that will create end-to-end experiences to make journeys productive, connected and accessible. Currently, MiRA.OS is the lynchpin of the Laureti ecosystem experience where user’s lifestyles and Laureti cars are connected securely. So, users can experience a seamless, synchronized and more productive mobility. It would eventually prove that Laureti’s solution has a potential to go beyond cars.
Today, the partnership between Laureti and Icona is one that tells a story of cross pollination of technologies; where MiRA’s current use-case is repurposed to deliver a global solution. Whilst Laureti sets to provide the technology; Icona will package design and technology for smart city
contractors as a readily available turnkey product, thanks to its vast experience, having designed such unique projects like the Hyperloop capsule and having played an active role in the Shanghai Full-chain Smart Driving Pilot Zone.
Laureti’s repurposed ecosystem for urban mobility in smart cities is like going through a city where everything works exactly to the users’ needs and their convenience. It maximizes their productivity and relieves them from fragmentation and hassle across various modes of transport.
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“Icona’s vision of the future is embedded in every project across a wide range of sectors. For decades, through the lens of our design, we have been showing the world how our future is being reshaped. As we lead this from the forefront, we see an immediate opportunity where our offering can be further strengthened through the MiRA technology.” Said Teresio Gigi Gaudio, CEO of Icona.
“Giving back the richness of time to people during travel is what MiRA does. It’s why we focus on productivity while living up to the tenets of sustainability. If you could regain 30 minutes of commute time, that is a bedtime story for your kids. The time savings during each commute add up to something significant that will benefit collectively. This is about enabling a better work-life balance for people through mobility. If we bring out our solution with a few cents on a ticket price to make it affordable, the benefits still outweigh; and we are looking at a revenue of $200,000 per day in Europe alone.” says Marcus Paleti, CEO of Laureti Group.