Safety on the move

Transport app

Transport is one of the biggest expenses for companies and in a city like Bengaluru, which is the IT and startup hub of the country, it’s hard to push the lack of it aside. Since public transport isn’t very reliable, most companies have tied up with taxi agencies or aggregators to help ferry their employees to and from work. But even then, there is some disturbance in the way things are run as most companies manually create the transport schedules.

When Deepesh Agarwal, Akash Maheshwari and Anuvrata Arora noticed this, they decided to start ‘MoveInSync’, an enterprise transportation company that provides a cost-effective and eco-friendly form of movement for the employees of various companies. The startup emphasises on the safety of its customers so it has created an algorithm that takes care of everything, as opposed to someone manually monitoring the situation. Deepesh explains that they aren’t owners or aggregators of taxis or buses, they only work with existing contracts that companies have. “Our clients already have tie-ups with taxi agencies or aggregators. We just make this form of transport more efficient by reducing the number of vehicles on the street and the time they take to drop and pick up employees,” he says.

‘MoveInSync’ has a patented algorithm that plans the travel schedule for its employees. “It plans the best route a taxi driver should take, what time they will arrive, live tracks the route and in case of unplanned stops of drop offs, it sends a warning to the security team of the company,” says Deepesh.

The company initially started as a carpooling app for end users but the 3 realised that it’s not likely to work in countries like India. This is when they turned into a ride-sharing app for employees of IT firm, corporates, BPOs and more. A few years back, they were approached by Google India, their first customer, to solve their transport problem. “Google wanted us to look at the problem of transport for their employees in a different way. When it comes to carpooling employees, it is a very predetermined schedule so it doesn’t allow for changes. With our algorithm, it becomes easier for the vehicle drivers and aggregators, employees and company management to function,” says Deepesh.

Since people can predict their work schedule by the end of the day, they can use the ‘MoveInSync’ app to enter the information for the next day and so on. And if women are travelling at night, their movements are tracked well to keep them safe. “We provide drivers with a handset that records all the data, and each employee has a digital pin code that keeps track of them. And if a person wants to get off at any other stop but home and work, they will have to take prior permission from the company,” he explains.

The company’s aim is to reduce the carbon footprint being created so it takes great steps to cut down on the number of vehicles on the roads. And in an effort to bring back the greenery to Bengaluru, they are planting 3,000 saplings in various parts of the city.