IIT Madras develops app for efficient, easy inter-city goods transportation

Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, have developed a mobile application for easier and efficient transportation of goods within cities, and eliminating the role of middlemen.

Called 'OptRoute', the app connects a consumer with a driver sans any commission or on-boarding fee. The payment from the consumer goes directly to the driver, with no intermediaries.

The first version of the App has been developed and commercialised through OptRoute Logistics, an IIT Madras-incubated start-up co-founded by N.S. Narayanaswamy, Professor at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras and Anuj Fulia, an IIT Madras alumnus.

The basic ideas behind the app were presented during the 2020 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference held in Cancun, Mexico.

"OptRoute aims to solve the issues in connectivity between drivers and customers in the goods logistics and transport domain. The main issues faced are unavailability of return load for transporters and vehicle capacity under-utilization. Current market of this domain is highly unorganized making it inefficient.

"It is also ripe for deployment of technology based solutions to reach the goals set by the National Logistics Policy, 2022," Narayanswamy said.

The start-up has also developed packing and efficient vehicle space utilisation methods, which will be included in the application once sufficient initial traction is achieved.

"We have developed a lightweight mobile application where customers and drivers can get connected. OptRoute does not use any third-party services allowing us to cut down the cost of operation to an absolute minimum and because of the same reason we are able to provide our service with zero percent commission.

"This design and development has had a significant contribution done by alumni and students of IIT Madras. By the end of this year, we will scale our service to be available in over 500 cities," Fulia said.

The OptRoute application has two user modes - Driver and Customer. In the customer mode, users can place any goods transport request for which a vehicle is needed. In the Driver mode, users can view the available requests and accept them.

The service is currently available in multiple cities across India, including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Faridabad, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Noida, Panchkula, Pune, Mohali, Surat and Zirakpur.