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The commercial vehicle industry is undergoing rapid changes with the rise of electrification, digitization and autonomous driving technologies. Still, the most significant change lies in shifting the fundamental mobility systems. The Transportation as a Service model operates like a powerful business solution that allows companies to replace ownership of vehicles with new operational methods and financial systems and sustainable practices.
In the latest episode of Analytics Insight podcast, host Priya Dialani speaks with Kavitha Ramachandragowda, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Routematic, about the industry transition. The conversation shows how TaaS has evolved from a system serving only consumer needs to a platform providing large-scale employee transportation solutions across India.
Priya starts the conversation by introducing Routematic’s origins and evolution. Kavitha shared that the company began in 2013 as a SaaS-based employee transport platform, with Cisco as its first customer. “We started building our SaaS platform, improving our product based on customer feedback,” she said.
A game-changing moment came in 2018 when customers asked for integrated fleet services. “Why not give us fleet as well, because that way there’s going to be a check and balance. Everything is on technology,” Kavitha recalled. This marked Routematic’s entry into transport-as-a-service, with Infosys as its first fleet customer.
The pandemic put Routematic through severe tests. “Commute just vanished, and it felt like someone had turned off gravity from our entire business,” Kavitha mentioned. However, the organization made the forced stop into an opportunity. The Co-founder mentioned, “We doubled down on our EVs and safety tech, sharpened our operations, and when the world opened back, we were not just back, we were better and far more resilient.”
Today, Routematic serves over 300 customers across 25 cities, operates more than 7,500 vehicles, and completes over 10,000 trips daily. The most prominent users of the service are based in IT cities like Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Delhi NCR.
One of the key parts of the discussion includes the scope of three emissions. Kavitha emphasized that “transport is one of the biggest contributors for pollution, especially road transport,” making employee commuting a highly visible emission source. With nearly 2,000 GCCs emerging in India, she sees commute optimization as the “easiest lever to fix.”
“You don’t need to rebuild offices or redesign supply chains,” she explained. “You just have to optimize routes, adapt EVs, improve utilization, and boom, you see a tangible emission reduction.” Through shared mobility, reduced dead kilometers, and EV deployment, Routematic is helping enterprises make sustainability non-negotiable.
