Transit apps are ubiquitous with a variety of individual features designed to make a commuter's journey easy. They are increasingly failing to cater to the specific needs of commuters due to a lack of internal coordination and operational inefficiencies. Commuters need more than just having a vehicle at their call and Tummoc was on point when it found this gap in the commuting experience. Starting as Bykerr in 2016, it has come a long way in making the commute flexible and seamless. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Narayan Mishra, Co-founder & CTO at Tummoc.

1. Kindly share your point of view on the current scenario of Big Data Analytics and its future.

With the ever-changing technology dynamics in the world, data is also growing every day. Various studies have also shown that in today's time we are producing the data in a couple of days, which was earlier produced in decades. Data is created in many ways, the simplest and the most impactful data is created by just browsing the internet. Data is not just a product, it is also used as a service in the dealing of data and information.

One of the major technology trends, big data analytics is redefining the operations of different businesses at the global level. With the help of Big Data Analytics, the companies can work towards the growth of IoT networks, Data as a product, quantum computing, and data use for hyper-personalization.

With the growing awareness in this segment, companies are forming separate departments dedicated to data analytics. The teams handle all the data, interpret it and use it in a way that helps the company's growth.   

Data skills are important for all students and professionals from various fields. Being capable in this area will open many doors for them in the future. The need for big data analytics is expected to increase, forcing businesses to keep up with the ongoing trends. Also, Business Intelligence is sensibly helping enterprises come up with better strategies to evolve their business further.

Once the companies start realizing how efficient and lucrative data analytics is, and how well it benefits them, more companies will leverage it, and the market will continue to grow.

There are a few tools that might help businesses in estimating the growth of the industry and understanding consumer behavior. Some of them are predictive analytics, AI, and Augmented data management.

2. What does your technology and business roadmap look for the rest of the year

In this evolving world of technology, it is challenging to keep up with the trends and expectations. For now, we feel that it is essential to make an intelligent platform. The year looks challenging and we think we will learn a lot this year as a company. Data plays a vital role in our Transit app. In order to create an efficient data management process, we source, manipulate, update and manage that data to enhance our services.

For now, our engineers are focusing on efficient data management, building the Omni channel data platform, and cities' data to come up soon with real-time tracking, where core predictive analytics algorithms are going to help us.

"As technology and data are evolving, it is important to statistically analyze patterns and gain an understanding of them."

Besides, we are looking for continuous improvement in our research, engineering, and services. Some of the aspects we are highly focused on are – format agnostics data platform, building dynamic route suggestion engine factoring, intelligent vehicle tracking using crowdsourcing, big data management and SaaS platforms (APIs & SDKs), data security and policies, crowd prediction, and traffic inside the bus, to name a few platforms.

3. How are disruptive technologies like IoT/Big Data analysis/AI/Machine Learning/Cloud Computing impacting today's innovation?

IoT offers a low-cost, high-tech solution to enhance performance and introduce MRT characteristics to other modes of transportation, like buses. Due to this, services and service delivery are improved in terms of scheduling, transport time optimization, dependability, handling equipment problems, and meeting client expectations.

Internet of Things device is a useful tool to track and authenticate goods and shipments using GPS-based technologies in the supply chain. Additionally, they can keep an eye on how things are stored, which improves quality control all along the supply chain.

Technology like AI is offering the best support to our teams in making the workflow smoother. It also helps us in understanding the behavior and needs of our consumers in a way that we can use the same data to enhance our services according to what our audience needs.

With the surge in the use of technology, it is doubtlessly a great space to work in.

Artificial intelligence has helped many businesses in keeping their services intact even during tough times like pandemics. With the support of technologies like AI and ML, we could analyze our customers' patterns to know what they want, and we delivered.

4. Kindly brief us about the company, its mission, and objectives since the inception of the company? Also please brief us about the specialization and products/ services that you provide to your customers and how do they get value out of it?

We strive to make public transport commutes seamless across the country, and

eventually across the globe. There are huge public transport networks around the

world, and we see that as an opportunity. At the moment, we're doing this solely for the common man, the people who use public transport every day because that's the only choice that works for their price point. We want to make their lives easier as they have enough to worry about. In the longer run, we'd also like to address the other group of individuals who don't rely on public transport in the first place. With them, cabs and private vehicles have become more common because the ease of access or the convenience associated with public transport there isn't as much as these modes.

Tummoc is an app that helps people with their public transport commute. It does

this by:

Providing accurate information for all modes of public transport in a city.

  Information includes timings, fares, locations, etc.

Features that make public transport commutes easier. For e.g., ticketing, live-

tracking, etc.

First and last-mile connectivity by partnering with MaaS providers and facilitators.

5. Mention some of the awards, achievements, recognitions, and clients' feedback that you feel are notable and valuable for the company.

Tummoc was started as Bykerr in 2016 which was solely a first and last-mile connectivity app. It was an operations-savvy company that primarily focused on ride booking. Between its inception and 2020, Bykerr received various awards, accolades, and grants such as the Best Startup of Karnataka, Toyota Mobility Award for Best Startup, and a grant for the Best Startup.

In 2020, Bykerr was a finalist in the Startup India awards. It was around this time that Bykerr started transitioning to Tummoc. We came to the realization that with four years of data backing them, we could focus on creating a multi-modal public transport app that offers first and last-mile connectivity additionally. In doing this, they would transform the operations-heavy Bykerr into the product-driven Tummoc of today. Although this was a risky move, we knew this would create a much bigger impact.

Tummoc went live after rebranding from Bykerr in Jan 2021, and despite the pandemic managed to grow its user base to 50k in June. By August, it had doubled to 100k. In September, our first patent got approved for "System and Method for Multi-Modal Trip Planning with First and Last Mile Connectivity".

By the end of the year, the app was nearing 400k users. Users saw a number of updates, new features, and significant overall improvements through 2021. In terms of funding, Tummoc raised $540K in its seed round in 2021 and is working on Series A now. And we're also touching approx 800k users today soon to reach 100K users.

6. Brief us about the proactive Founder/CEO of the company and his/her contributions to the company and the industry.

Hiranmay. CEO, Co-Founder of Tummoc, handles the overall Business Operations & Strategy, as well as Investment & Investor Relations for the company. He grew up in Orissa. After completing his Engineering there, he moved to Mysore for his MBA. Here, he got placed at HCL as a Management Trainee. He spent 7 years at HCL, moving right from a Management Trainee to the Area Sales Manager level. Here, he took on a product that was brand new to the market, and build it into a multi-crore revenue stream, establishing a healthy ecosystem for it to thrive in for years to come. In the time he spent at HCL, as a leader he was exposed to work in operations, people and process management, P&L, BD and so much more. After HCL, he joined the TimesJobs.com division of Times Group as a Team Sales Manager, heading the SME-IT vertical. This is where he met me, his fellow co-founder, Narayan. Since 2016, he's been an entrepreneur, loving all the challenges, perks, and learning that comes with the role.

Being a traveler himself, he realized that there are a lot of challenges involved. Basically, there is a last-mile challenge. When we encounter a personal experience, it leads us to an idea of how this last mile can be a business model. With the experience, we realized that overcrowding and the unavailability of technology to organize the traffic and roads were becoming an issue.

After brainstorming, we came up with a solution and researched more on it. We rigorously surveyed if people wanted the last mile connectivity. We asked people if there is a specific service that they would take. We understood there is a huge potential because there are no major players in the industry as of now, and that is how we came up with our business model. The first thing was to build a core team. Once the core team was built, the main focus was on the business operations. Now to begin with everything, the main resource required was funding, the second thing was people and the third was a vision. He focused on these three things.

Now, he manages the complete business operation, finance, legal compliances, collaborations, any outsider interactions, etc., in the company.

7. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?

Tummoc is the only patented multi-modal transit app in India. It's as simple as that.

It is the only app that will provide multiple modes of transport within a city, along with first and last-mile connectivity. Currently, we are also launching digital ticketing on our App which we have a competitive advantage in the industry. 

8. What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?

In the past couple of months, we added four cities, and we'll be adding more soon. By the end of this year, we should have at least 30 cities. By the end of 2022, we will also introduce our mobile ticketing system for a variety of modes.

With a DAU of 1 million users and a GTV (Gross Transaction Value) of $10 Million, we are expecting to exceed 5 million Users on our app. We are also expanding our team and plan to have around 100 Members by end of this year in various domains.

We are also working on a feature in the app where users get an option to customize their rides with a single journey multi-modal ticket. For trip customization, a user can tell us that he needs a minimum walking distance for the first file, or ask for a suggestion where the first mile is not needed. And we give him all the options of reaching his closest public transportation mode without using the first mile.