By Riley Kaminer
Driving in Miami is stressful enough. Add on the need to figure out a place to buy food, what to order, how to order it, how to get there, and how to update the retail location on how soon you’ll be there – and ordering ahead easily becomes a real headache.
Miami startup MAVI aims to make this whole process less stressful through its in-car solution. The software, OnMyWay, enables connected cars to help drivers and passengers with location, ordering, product recommendation, payment, and pickup coordination.
Meanwhile, MAVI’s ‘middleware’ software connects these users directly to retailers’ existing eCommerce platforms for inventory, order, timing, loyalty, and curbside orchestration to the car’s dashboard interface. This allows retailers to sidestep the need to integrate with each individual car.
CEO and co-founder Cynthia Hollen told Refresh Miami that the first phase of the platform has been built in collaboration with eight major car brands. The company plans to launch commercially – as in 20 million cars on the road – as early as the first quarter of next year.
Hollen [pictured above] also shared that the company has partnered with HARMAN Automotive, part of Samsung, to deploy MAVI’s technology onto all the new 2024 cars they work with as part of the HARMAN Ignite Automotive Cloud Platform. “Harman Automotive is the largest manufacturer of head units for all the cars around the world,” she said, accounting for around one-third of all cars.
This partnership with HARMAN goes back to the origins of MAVI, around 2021, when the startup was approached to build its platform for the auto giant. “HARMAN called us and said they need retail experts to figure out how to put commerce in cars,” recalled Hollen. Instead of building it for HARMAN, the MAVI team decided to build with them. Why? “Because this is a huge opportunity,” Hollen asserted.
MAVI currently has seven full-time employees, plus a veritable army of part-time team members building out their platform. Prior to launching MAVI, Hollen spent more than 20 years as a retail and wholesale executive – building brands including Anheuser-Busch, Zegna, Nike.com, and Bloomingdales.com. The startup raised about $1.8 million in venture funding in 2022.
“The pandemic made this business possible in so many ways,” said Hollen. “It was a perfect storm in terms of the business model itself, but also in my ability to put this company in Miami.” On the business model, Hollen described the increasing consumer interest in getting their ‘connected’ car to do things for them. “We know consumers want their car to help do their errands better.”
And on the Miami side, the influx of tech talent, startups, and investors has made Miami an ideal location for the company. Hollen, a native New Yorker who has been based in Miami since 2008, initially toyed with the idea of basing the company in Detroit. But our growing tech ecosystem continues to validate her decision to grow MAVI’s roots in South Florida.
This year, MAVI took part in Endeavor Miami’s EndeavorLAB cohort for women founders, which Hollen said was “a great way to continue to connect to the Miami ecosystem.” MAVI also participated in two programs from Plug and Play.
“Food is the on-ramp,” Hollen continued, noting that expansion into other verticals is all but inevitable. “We are creating the next generation of eCommerce.” And it’s happening one car at a time.
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