This startup wants to enable mobility transformation for the developing world
THE word “journey” is used loosely in travel to describe the act of getting from Point A to Point B… and then C, D, all the way to Z. It’s an idealistic word, come to think of it, that encapsulates what travel-tech companies are striving to achieve today – the seamless, connected trip.
The truth is a journey consists of many mini-journeys and it begins the moment you leave your house. The trip to the airport, the flight itself, the (often surprisingly overpriced) ride to the hotel, and then every other vehicle you step into during your stay there. Albeit its pitfalls, this way of travel functions well and has done so for decades; but just because it isn’t broken and doesn’t need fixing, doesn’t mean it can’t be significantly improved. And that comes by digitalising, and digitising, transport systems.
Fragmented journeys aren’t exclusive to tourism either. Sans your own car, moving around your own city usually consists of a first, middle, and last mile – and depending on the city you live in, these miles could be a breeze or a test in patience and determination. Take it from someone who lives in the traffic-prone city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, last mile connectivity can make or break your ability to use public transportation.
Asia Mobiliti, a tech startup headquartered in Shah Alam, Malaysia, wants to enable mobility transforming for the developing world and is building connected data products and mobility solutions in an effort to create a consumer-and-client experience that’s sustainable and seamless.
The logic is simple – digitise as many transport providers as possible, gather data on their movement and availability, and create a network that’s consolidated and precise. Contrary to popular belief, despite thousands of listings online and on dedicated apps, a large segment of the transport industry isn’t online yet, which is both a gap and an opportunity. It means there are fleets waiting to be connected and rolled out to serve increasing demand from travellers.
We caught up with Ramachandran Muniandy (Ram), CEO and co-founder of Asia Mobiliti to get an idea of what digitalising transport is all about.
Q: What does the digitalisation of transport and travel entail exactly?
Ram: It means digitising the entire passenger experience from the point of discovery irrespective of the modes of transport that is available through a single, common search interface and being able to figure out what’s the best way to get from Point A to Point B, and then being able to book that multimodal trip. Your first mile is a mode of transport that is different from your middle and last mile. And being able to get timely updates of those booked links of trips.
Then comes the actual boarding process – you want to be able to board a vehicle and a service, so how do you do that? Being able to scan a QR code or tap your phone. And being able to pay for the entire trip seamlessly that may have required multiple modes of transport, under a single mode of payment – all that requires the complete digitalisation of the passenger experience from end-to-end and that is what is required now from a mobility perspective.
You’re looking at integrating different modes of transport but instead of taking an infrastructure approach which requires different hardware and different modes of operation, what can tie it all together is a digital layer which is aggregated, coordinated, and digitsed so all of these services can be accessed in a common way.
Q: Transport, mobility and tourism are interconnected. How can the digitalisation of transport influence the travel and tourism sector?
Ram: I believe it’ll be a huge boost to tourism. Infrequent travellers will have an easy, common, intuitive way to discover transport options at their destination – transport options that may not be available in their home country. This is crucial because they are there for a fixed period of time and they don’t have to do ground research on how to get from Point A to Point B – what’s the cheapest way, the fastest way, the safest way.
We are already thinking about cross-border mobility as a service, whereby your first mile is in Country A, your middle mile is a flight, and your last mile is in Country B. Imagine being able to plan that seamlessly at the point of booking your trip instead of when you’re already in Country B. This is going to be a huge catapult towards the experience of travellers and tourists – and this should be a priority for countries that rely on tourism for their national growth.
Q: What are some of the biggest obstacles when it comes to digitalising transport today?
Ram:I think the biggest challenge would be the availability of data. That is really the heart of the problem. And being able to digitise means you must be able to share data across in a standard format, being able to interchange that data across different modes of transport so that we can integrate the modes of transport. That’s what we’re doing with our technology platform – we’re making it simpler for data to be produced, generated and shared across, standardizing that as much as possible, and sharing that across common interfaces, like making that data available via APIs.
I think that’s a huge strategy. I think the second challenge, from a transport operator perspective, is obviously the cost of adopting new technology. All this while there has been a dependency on foreign technology and systems that come from Europe and North America that are geared for large public transport operators… and that’s always been out of reach for the smaller guys.
Ramachandran Muniandy, CEO and co-founder, Asia Mobiliti
Q: In terms of data and transport – what are some gaps you see in the tourism and hospitality scene that could be improved upon with the right technology?
Ram: I think the last mile in this case for travellers flying in is the airport transfer service – that’s a huge area to be optimised. It needs to be integrated with flight arrivals. Your current experience is… you land at a foreign airport and you may not have the same ride-hailing services from your home country, on top of not knowing if you’ll get to the airport on time and what sort of traffic demand is there.
Being able to figure that out ahead of time would be great. It would also decongest airports and provide a common standard service to all travellers. Once you get to your hotel – especially if it’s on an island somewhere or a beach resort – you’ll find they run their own shuttle services, mostly old-school fixed-timetable rides which have their own issues. If you’re on holiday, all of this should be taken care of for you.
Turning your fixed-route, fixed-timetable shuttle service to a demand-responsive transit service and being able to get the hotel guests to book a ride from a common app – those are some areas that I think can be greatly improved with technology.
Q: You have three primary pillars at Asia Mobiliti – targeted at different verticals and transport areas. How do you cater these solutions for separate scenarios and applications, and how dynamic is the tech?
Ram: Absolutely. The platform consists of three verticals that are designed to house products that have very specific purposes for each application and at the same time work with each other. That is why an integrated hardware-software suite of services enables us to serve the various needs of transport operators. The first vertical is IoT and Machine Learning which consists of specific products for telematics – this is where tight integration of hardware-software happens, along with Machine Learning, for very specific mobility-related applications such as railway and road condition monitoring systems.
Second vertical is the Transit Tech vertical and this consists of payment and ticketing services for bus operators, analytics services and transit feed generation and hosting services.
Third vertical is Mobility as a Service (MaaS) which is the multimodal journey planning engine, and the DRT service. All these products are allowed to work with each other seamlessly – that’s the kind of flexibility we provide.
Q: Your ‘Mobility as a Service (MaaS) solution is designed to achieve sustainable goals. Can you expand on that?
Ram: It’s probably the most effective strategy to increase public transport ridership. Once you have high public transport ridership, you are moving people at scale across a city and within a city in a sustainable, economical and reliable fashion. That’s what brings about a sustainable city with minimal traffic congestion.
I don’t think you can get rid of traffic congestion but you can ensure that it’s alleviated. With our present makeup of internal-combustion-engine-powered vehicles, lesser time on the road means lesser greenhouse gas emissions – that’s a huge environmental driver there.
Being able to move in your city in the most efficient way means that your spend for travel is optimised, which leads to greater wellbeing of residents in the city. It means access to jobs, school, work, leisure, play for a family is greatly improved. Physical mobility leads to social mobility – that’s the monopoly-add-on effect of having an efficient transportation system in the city. It makes our cities livable and that’s what it truly means to have a smart city.
