He didn’t excel in school and didn’t finish university, yet his circle included friends with ADE and other business degrees who preferred private lessons of a different kind. The Alicante native, now 21, Germán Agulló, has already helped GDV Mobility reach its first million euros in revenue. Founded last March with partners Héctor Arana and Óscar Barcenas, the company achieved profitable growth unusually early for a startup. This milestone drew attention from national media, including Forbes, which highlighted young entrepreneurs with strong growth projections in Spain.
His breakthrough came from targeting a commercial niche with real demand: spare parts for electric mobility vehicles. He explains that scooters were once treated as disposable tools, and when a part breaks, the rider is left stranded. To counter this, he built a distributor serving wholesalers through a digital platform. The operation now serves more than a thousand customers and supports around 15,000 repair workshops across Spain and into neighboring markets such as Bulgaria, Portugal, France, and Switzerland.
Initially focused on scooters and bicycles, the plan is to broaden the product range to include spare parts for motorcycles and eventually electric cars. In the medium term, the ambition is to become the leading company in Europe within its sector. The drive behind this vision includes a successful willingness to pursue financing and strategic support from experienced leaders, including Paul Fernández, a former vice president and founder of Santander’s U.S. subsidiary, who oversaw the firm’s first funding round.
Agulló emphasizes the influence of family roots in wholesale work. His grandfather and father were wholesalers, and much of his childhood was spent in warehouses. He jokes about always carrying packing tape as a kid and now leading a logistics operation that relies on the same hands-on mindset.
The entrepreneur has a passion for biking, competing in semi-professional cycles before a medical issue forced a change. He pursued various roles in his youth, working as a basketball referee and a playground supervisor, before returning to the world of motorcycles and logistics. During the pandemic he joined a company’s import department and soon decided to start his own venture.
His first attempt at distributing bicycle parts failed, owing to an imperfect business model and product mix. That setback, however, helped forge partnerships that supplied critical technical and business expertise. GDV Materialized in March in the Carolinas storage room, a space the team later moved from to a municipal business incubator. Plans include opening a new 3,000 square meter warehouse in Alicante in the near future.
From the outset, technology has been central to the company’s strategy. Although he does not hold a diploma, Agulló remains curious and self-taught, and he regularly attends artificial intelligence conferences. He recalls attending summits in Alcoy and wonders why cutting-edge AI is not yet broadly applied in the mobility sector.
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The company is building one of its major pillars around a new system that will allow customers to place orders by voice. If a reference is unknown, a photo of the needed part can trigger an algorithm to identify the item and generate an order automatically. The same pioneering technology used by leading retailers to streamline product collection will be adopted in the GDV warehouse to reduce errors in order preparation.
Agulló notes that his journey is unusual among peers, yet he champions the talents of young people. He highlights his logistics manager, who is nineteen years old, as a sign that youthful energy can surpass many with decades of experience. Today the firm employs a team of fifteen dedicated professionals whose work underpins the company’s rapid growth.