Johannesburg - A London-based
startup backed by the billionaire co-founder of EBay and an executive at Uber
Technologies is trying to make sense of seemingly anarchic transportation
networks in some of the world’s largest cities.
WhereIsMyTransport
compiles information on the routes of mini-bus taxis, tuk-tuks or rickshaws
that dart through slum-filled mega-cities, but aren’t shown on any formal maps.
Computer app developers and city governments then use the data to map out
networks that link these informal routes with traditional city buses and
trains.
“The market for
smart-city solutions in just heating up,” said Kim Fennel, the chief executive
officer of deCarta, a digital mapping company that’s now part of Uber. Fennel,
along with EBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar, backed the startup with 1.76 million
pounds ($2.15 million) last year.
Organising Chaos
While commuters
in the developed world can easily check the internet to track rail schedules
and hail cabs from their mobile phones, life isn’t as simple for people in
emerging markets. Routes taken by informal transport including motorbikes and
the three-wheel passenger cars known as tuk-tuks can change without notice and have
no set times. That’s if you know where to find them, and can figure out where
they’re going, often in vehicles that are over-packed, unroadworthy or have
little regard for traffic rules.
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City authorities
such as the Municipality of Tshwane, which includes the capital Pretoria,
as well as the Gautrain transit system in Johannesburg and the University of
Cape Town, are paying for the information, according to co-founder Devin de
Vries. App writers get free access up to a point, then pay fees.
WhereIsMyTransport’s staff
jump onto passenger vans to track routes or mine global positioning data
gathered from mobile phones to build on the platform, said de Vries, who
started the venture after winning a Microsoft competition at the University of
Cape Town that sent him to Silicon Valley for a spell.
Rival routers
WhereIsMyTransport
is far from the first to tackle the problem of urban mapping in rapidly
changing cities.
Digital mapping
has spawned several rival systems. London-based startup what3words assigned a
three-word code to each three-meter by three-meter space on the planet for a
system adopted by the postal services of Ivory Coast, Mongolia and St. Maarten,
according to the company website. Mapillary, based in Malmo, Sweden, offers
users the ability to link landmarks in digital photography with mapping, its
website shows. Zippr, created in Hyderabad, India, changes addresses to 8-digit
codes that are overlaid on a Google map to improve its accuracy, the company
said.
“Startups need
to devise innovative revenue models because statistically-significant data
takes a while to accrue and can run into privacy hurdles,” said Aditya Vuchi,
founder of Zippr. “It requires scale and coverage, which are hard to create in
has more than 200 projects signed up to the platform including apps and
websites, and the company has data for 20 cities across 10 countries, CEO de
Vries said. The company is seeking to raise another $2 million this
quarter.
Investors
include Tom Boardman, former head of South African lender Nedbank Group and
chairman of Athena Capital, early-stage venture funds Goodwell Investments and
Horizen Ventures, and private equity investor Mertech Services, based in
Stellenbosch near Cape Town.