Bengaluru: Jam-packed roads, rising pollution levels, record-breaking summers - these terms are more or less synonymous with Bengaluru. Deepesh Agarwal, an IITian who moved to the city in 1998, designed intelligent transport systems for the U.S. during his time in Motorola.
After a point, he realised that he would much rather do something closer home and tackle problems that he actually faced. And maybe, through it all, give something back to the city that had become home. He quit his job in 2008, got together with two fellow IITians, Akash Maheshwari and Anuvrata Arora and founded MoveinSync, a startup that encouraged people to carpool instead of driving their own vehicles to work everyday and adding to the melee.
Now, with over one lakh employees using their cabs across the country everyday, they have decided to take their dream of reducing the carbon footprint one step further, by kicking off a crowdfunding campaign to plant 3,000 trees across the city. This they hope to do by raising Rs 1 lakh in a period of 30 days.
“We’re looking at planting trees in IT parks and similar spots, where they can be maintained,” explained Deepesh. “If this works, we're going to sustain the campaign. Trees are cut so we can have wider roads for more cars. Maybe we can tackle both,” he added.
Their company, MoveinSync, looks at encouraging people to carpool by making the system itself easier, focussing on women’s safety - an issue that has grown as more and more women work late nights and travel long distances - and ensuring, through efficient management, that less cars ply the roads. “Corporates are saving costs in the region of 25 per cent annually, employees are happy and there is a reduction in traffic density as well,” he explained.
They started out by organising carpools on an individual basis, running one model in Hyderabad and another in Singapore. “That didn't work out so well in 2009, partly because people didn’t use their mobiles as much and also because they didn’t want to share a cab,” said Deepesh. “We approached companies like Infosys and Google as well. Google took us on board, telling us to approach it on a larger scale instead,” he added.
“Logistics is a major part of it - you need data that will help you identify the employees who live in a particular area. This is too much to handle manually, so you need technology that will take care of it,” he explained. “The idea is to reduce the number of cabs on the road, so a company that needs about 16,000 cabs will only be utilising around 12,000,” he added.
Another indirect benefit, he explained, is the use of paper. Companies usually print three copies of a ride for recording purposes. “Obviously, our process is completely automated,” Deepesh remarked.
Women’s safety is a looming problem and one that deters many female employees from using shared cabs. The passenger signs on when they enter the cab and the company uses GPS to track the entire journey. It also identifies gender, notes the presence of co-passengers, if any and ensures that no stops are made apart from those that have been pre-defined. “We had realised that the only thing that stops people from taking office cabs is the quality of service offered, so that's where we stepped in,” he explained.
Tree campaign
The tree planting campaign was launched on Earth Day. “Our job is to reduce the carbon footprint,” he reiterated. “The heatwave this summer really moved me into action. I have been here for a long time and consider myself a Bengalurean. I also remember times when there was no need for air-conditioning. We need more greenery, that's the only way to bring down the temperature.”
They also wanted everybody to have a hand in this and decided, therefore, to begin a crowdfunding campaign on fueladream.com, an online platform. “We have collected Rs 15,000 in the last two days,” said Deepesh. The co-founders of the company have also put in Rs 10,000 as their individual contribution to the cause.
“It’s not about planting trees anywhere. The whole idea is to make sure they are maintained, which we cannot do manually,” Deepesh added. Tech parks seemed the obvious option and MoveinSync is also approaching the BBMP to chalk out a plan with them. “We hope this works, because we don’t want it to be a one-off thing,” said Deepesh. “We need an idea or a model that we can sustain,” he added.
