Customer Stories / Transportation & Logistics

2023
Wilma

Build a Safe, Reliable Ride-Hailing Service for Women on AWS with Wilma

Learn how ride-hailing app Wilma optimized for scalability and data protection on AWS.

Scales on demand

 to accommodate growth needs

Secures data

at rest and in transit

Optimizes

for cost efficiency

Overview

Wilma Technologies Inc. (Wilma) knows that a negative ride-hailing experience is more than just an inconvenience for many women. Oftentimes, it can be quite frightening. In 2021, the ride-hailing app was founded to provide women and gender-diverse people with safe, reliable transportation services and job opportunities.

To bring its app to the public, Wilma needed secure, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure—so it turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Opportunity |  Using AWS Services to Build App Infrastructure for Wilma

Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Wilma is North America’s first women-driving-women ride-hailing service. It uses a subscription-based model to create a safe, trusting community of riders and drivers. “Our goal is to be in 170 cities in the next 5 years,” says Terri Phipps, cofounder and CEO of Wilma. “We needed to set up the right long-term infrastructure to do that successfully.”

Wilma first relied on a template-based service to support its front end, while its backend infrastructure was hosted on a server farm. As it grew, Wilma required more robust front-end and backend infrastructure. So, it built its own mobile front end using React Native, an open-source mobile framework, and engaged AWS for a backend infrastructure solution in 2022.

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It’s clear that AWS genuinely wants to see startups like Wilma take that next big step and succeed.”

Terri Phipps
Cofounder and CEO, Wilma Technologies Inc.

Solution | Optimizing for Security and Scalability on AWS

On AWS, Wilma can scale based on consumer demand and business needs while continuing to adopt and contribute to open-source technologies such as Node.js, Fastify, and Platformatic. By using serverless technologies like AWS Lambda, an event-driven compute service; Amazon DynamoDB, a fully managed key-value NoSQL database; and a fully
event-driven architecture based on services like Amazon EventBridge, a serverless event bus, Wilma can prioritize the delivery of new features instead of managing a system with high operational costs. It provisions infrastructure automatically with HashiCorp Terraform and can scale across multiple regions without introducing downtime. “Every second of cloud
usage is optimized so that the infrastructure is as cost effective as it can be,” says Phipps. “On AWS, Wilma has the flexibility to scale. By embracing HashiCorp Terraform, there’s virtually no limit to how quickly we can expand without falling into vendor locking.”

Because Wilma must manage location data for every second of every ride, all data needs to be protected. With services like Amazon Cognito, which facilitates secure, frictionless customer identity and access management, and the embedded security model that every AWS service includes, Wilma can protect the privacy of all personally identifiable data. It also adopted AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS), a service that is used to create and control keys used to encrypt or digitally sign data, to encrypt data in transit and at rest.

Architecture Diagram

Figure 1: Wilma Technologies Architecture Diagram

Outcome | Providing Ride-Hailing Services with Women’s Safety in Mind

With its cloud infrastructure, Wilma enjoys an efficient, effective developer experience. It can experiment and support hybrid deployments to comply with regulations and meet business goals.

Wilma launched its first market test in London, Ontario, and plans to expand to Toronto in the summer of 2023. In its first year, it aims to bring safe transportation to 150,000 members in 15 cities.

“For me, it’s about relationships and support, and AWS is very good at both,” says Phipps. “I’ve been incredibly impressed with my AWS account management team. It’s clear that AWS genuinely wants to see startups like Wilma take that next big step and succeed.”

About Wilma Technologies Inc.

Wilma Technologies Inc. (Wilma) is a transportation-as-a-service mobile app designed with women’s safety in mind. Wilma is dedicated to providing safe, reliable ride-hailing services and job opportunities to empower women and gender-diverse people.

AWS Services Used

Amazon DynamoDB

Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed, serverless, key-value NoSQL database designed to run high-performance applications at any scale. 

Learn more »

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a serverless, event-driven compute service that lets you run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers.

Learn more »

AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS)

AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) lets you create, manage, and control cryptographic keys across your applications and AWS services.

Learn more »

Amazon EventBridge

Amazon EventBridge Event Bus is a serverless event bus that helps you receive, filter, transform, route, and deliver events.

Learn more »

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