The two winners of the Enroute challenge will receive seed funding from MBRDI to develop and pilot their solutions city-wide.
23 Aug 2024 | 3715 Views | By Autocar Professional Bureau
Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI), WRI India, and Villgro today announced Tummoc and Namma Yatri as the winners of 'Enroute: A Mobility-as-a-Service Challenge'.
The winners will leverage Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited’s (BMRCL) open General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data to develop ...
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Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI), WRI India, and Villgro today announced Tummoc and Namma Yatri as the winners of 'Enroute: A Mobility-as-a-Service Challenge'.
The winners will leverage Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited’s (BMRCL) open General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data to develop solutions that ease daily commutes in the city.
The two winners of the Enroute challenge will receive seed funding from MBRDI to develop and pilot their solutions city-wide. The deployment and demonstration of pilot solutions are expected to start by December 2024. Enroute’s program partners will provide mentorship and implementation support to all the teams for designing and implementing the pilots.
The challenge, which launched a call for innovative public transport solutions in June this year, is being conducted in partnership with Government of Karnataka (IT&BT), BMRCL, BMTC, Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), MBRDI, WRI India and Villgro.
Out of the 75 applications received, six enterprises made it to the final shortlist. The winning solutions, selected by an esteemed jury of government officials, private sector organisations, and citizen groups, will provide Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) solutions to encourage more people to use public transport in Bengaluru. Enroute is an extension of MBRDI’s 15-Minute Neighborhood vision that promotes digital solutions to enable sustainable cities with integrated mobility at the core.
Tummoc is a multi-modal connectivity and ticketing application, which aims to integrate journey planning, real-time data, and public transport ticketing in Bengaluru. Namma Yatri, a ride-hailing app based out of Bengaluru, aims to create a unified journey booking with a single QR code.
Dr. Ekroop Caur, IAS, Secretary, Department of Electronics, IT/BT, and S&T, said, “Enroute: A Mobility-As-A-Service Challenge is a significant step towards transforming Bengaluru’s public transportation landscape. Karnataka and Bengaluru are leading lights for tech innovation and startup ecosystem. We are pleased to support startups leveraging cutting-edge technology and GTFS open data to create seamless, efficient, and user-friendly mobility solutions that will enhance last-mile connectivity and encourage greater use of public transport. We are excited to see the impactful solutions this innovation challenge will bring to our city.”
Speaking at the announcement, Shilpa M, IAS, IT Director, BMTC, said, "BMTC is thrilled to collaborate with the innovative minds behind the Enroute challenge. For the first time, we are able to make BMTC data available in a global open data standard (GTFS). We hope the winning enterprises can successfully integrate open data into their solutions, enhancing the reliability and convenience of multi-modal public transport to make daily commutes smoother and reliable for Namma Bengaluru.
We look forward to seeing these solutions in action, creating a more connected and digitally accessible transport network attracting a new generation of commuters to the bus."
Kalpana Kataria, IRS, Executive Director, BMRCL, said at the event, "BMRCL is committed to fostering innovation that enhances the public transport (PT) experience in Bengaluru. Today's presentations have demonstrated that user-friendly solutions can be built for last-mile connectivity using PT and other modes of transport helping the commuters in making informed decisions after considering the time and money involved in a particular trip. Last-mile connectivity has always been an opportunity to grow, and we are counting on these innovations to bridge the gap. We are happy to provide the metro-related data to help these startups to come up with useful solutions.”
Bengaluru is India’s fourth most populous city and attracts people from across the country. However, the rapid urbanisation of Bengaluru has posed several challenges for the city, primarily in the form of sprawl, longer commutes, and growing traffic congestion, reducing access to destinations and mobility, and straining essential infrastructure. While the government has invested in augmenting and upgrading its public transport infrastructure and services, its full benefits can only be derived by better multimodal integration and information dissemination, which the Enroute challenge aims to address through open data innovation.