The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) has developed a mobile application to address the issues and eventually find solutions in order to facilitate easier and more efficient transportation of goods within cities and to connect drivers and customers.
Anuj Fulia, an IIT Madras alumnus, and Prof. N S Narayanaswamy, the department head of computer science and engineering at IIT Madras, co-founded OptRoute Logistics, an IIT Madras-incubated start-up, which commercialized the first version of the mobile application, which was designed and developed by faculty, students, and alumni.
There are two user modes in the OptRoute mobile application: one for the driver and one for the customer, who can request the transportation of goods. By accepting requests through the app, this driver-customer connection app links the two parties. There would be no commission or onboarding charge for the ride. According to IIT Madras’ official press release, the customer pays the driver directly for the ride, eliminating any intermediaries in the process.
“OptRoute aims to solve the issues in connectivity between drivers and customers in the goods logistics and transport domain. The main issues faced are the unavailability of return load for transporters and vehicle capacity under-utilization. The current market of this domain is highly unorganized making it inefficient. It is also ripe for the deployment of technology-based solutions to reach the goals set by the National Logistics Policy, 2022,” said Prof Narayanaswamy, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras.
OptRoute and the current services differ in a few ways, including the fact that there are no middlemen involved because the driver receives payment directly from the customer, the nominal subscription-based service model, and the zero commission on each transaction made by the driver and the customer. There won’t be any separate apps either; instead, there will be a single Android app that can be downloaded from the Google Play Store that serves as both the driver’s and the customer’s app.
“We have developed a lightweight mobile application where customers and drivers can get connected. OptRoute does not use any third-party services allowing us to cut down the cost of operation to an absolute minimum and because of the same reason we are able to provide our service with zero percent commission. This design and development has had a significant contribution done by alumni and students of IIT Madras. By the end of this year, we will scale our service to be available in 500+ cities,” said Anuj Fulia, Co-founder, OptRoute Logistics, and an IIT Madras alumnus.
During the 2020 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in Cancun, Mexico, the basic idea was presented. As of right now, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Faridabad, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Noida, Panchkula, Pune, Mohali, Surat, and Zirakpur are among the cities in the nation where the mobile application can be used operationally, according to IIT Madras.
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Source: HT
