For a bird’s eye view on traffic

It is better you take the Worli sea-link. See, traffic in Mahim is slow-moving. If you take the sea-link, it should take you about one-and-a-half hours to reach Churchgate.

This is Brijraj Vaghani looking at Mumbai’s map and traffic flow on his computer and giving me directions to reach Churchgate from his office in suburban Vile Parle, on an unusually rainy morning in early September. The commute by road took about an hour and 20 minutes.

Traffic monitoring

Brij is a Director of Birds Eye Systems, a Mumbai-based company he started with Ravi Khemani. As the name implies, the firm intends to provide a bird’s eye view of traffic in metros, having started off doing that in Mumbai.

Birds Eye Systems has expertise in system design, statistical analysis, data mining and software development. It now offers real-time monitoring of traffic using a patented algorithm.

It is a technology-based platform, explains Brij. Birds Eye has fitted probes on vehicles – call taxis, public transport vehicles and others – that have GPS installed in them. These probes continuously transmit position information to Birds Eye Systems. “We have a patented algorithm that converts the location information into speed information. We use map data and overlay traffic information on the map,” he says.

On completing his engineering degree from Bombay University, Brij went to the US for a Master’s programme in wireless communication and digital signal processing, after which he got a job at Qualcomm in the US. After a two-year stint with Qualcomm, Brij joined a start-up that was into the Wi-Max space. This job brought him back to India. However, a year down the line the start-up folded, providing the trigger for Brij to start Birds Eye Systems.

Birds Eye, says Brij, started off in April 2009 as a services company, doing projects for clients in the US. The turning point came when Birds Eye Systems participated in a competition for start-ups and got a cash award. More importantly, it got incubated at the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship at IIM-Ahmedabad.

Investment

The initial investment in the company was Rs 5 lakh, but CIIE invested Rs 20 lakh in the form of convertible debt. The funding also helped Birds Eye re-orient itself. “Once we got the funding, we stopped doing all the services projects and started focussing on traffic,” says Brij. The company started off offering the service in Mumbai and has deployed it in Bangalore and the National Capital Region. It has 20 employees now. Recently, the Indian Angel Network invested Rs 2 crore in Birds Eye Systems.

“I am 32 years now, slightly older than the current crop of entrepreneurs,” Brij says, disarmingly.

Birds Eye counts as its customers’ telecom companies that send out traffic alerts to its subscribers, logistics companies and some fleet operators. The company pays those on whose vehicles it has fitted the probes that transmit the traffic data and gets revenues from its customers.

According to Brij, Birds Eye has about 30,000 users across all platforms – Web site and mobile. Around 10 per cent of them are paying customers. “We are looking to increase that to 30 per cent,” he says.

He adds, “we expect to go to one million in the next year and a half. The challenge, he says, is in meeting the demand for traffic information across different channels. “We want to be the Google on the road. Anything people will need, they will come to us,” says Brij.

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