Traffline

Traffline is a website and smartphone application that provides real time traffic information in 5 cities in India, Mumbai, Delhi NCR,Hyderabad,Bangalore and Pune. Developed by Mumbai-based start-up Birds Eye Systems Pvt Ltd it was launched in 2012 by co-founders Brijraj Vaghani and Ravi Khemani. Apart from web and mobile, Traffline also provides Traffic updates via SMS, email, social media and call center.

History

Brijraj and Ravi, while living in the US, noticed that people were used to checking traffic status online before heading out. They planned to introduce Indian masses to the same concept and started Birds eye Systems in 2009. In 2010, they were chosen as finalists in that year's EDition of Power of IDeaS, and were selected for incubation at IIM, Ahmedabad. Their first application, Taxi Go, an online taxi booking service was launched in 2011 and launched Traffline in early 2012. Until now, the Traffline mobile application has received over a 100,000 downloads.

Association with Mumbai Traffic Police

Traffline is integrated into Mumbai Traffic Police's official website.

Data Sources

Traffic information is collected via following sources :

• Traffic flow data collected from moving probes - GPS fitted taxis, public transport vehicles and others.
• Accident and event related information collected from field personnel and crowdsourced from followers on Social networking sites like Twitter who volunteer such information.

Traffline runs the collected data through a patented algorithm and displays data to users in the form of colored coded lines along each road on a map. Each line represents traffic speed on the particular road.

Funding

Initial capital was the founders' personal savings of AbOUT Rs. 35-40 lakh. Since then various other institutions and investors have associated with Traffline.

Traffline (Birds Eye Systems Private Limited) has received funding from :

• Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) - seed investment of Rs. 20 lakhs
• Indian Angel Network- Rs. 2 crores in 2012.
• Undisclosed Series A investment from Matrix Partners in 2013.

Growth and Expansion Plans

By 2014, Traffline is planned to be rolled out for National Highways and in ten other Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. The organisation also plans to roll out other varied types of information for everyday commuters in the same cities.