Mobility Innovators

Ajay Bulusu (00:00):

So we have a company that works with a very large security company provider. They may be route like at least tens of thousands of guards all over the world every morning and every evening on beat planning. We help them do that. They’re doing it manually. It is a scheduler that they just say, this person goes there. That person goes there. Right? So, very simple routing problem. Same way we are getting into asset servicing. Let’s say you are a telco or you’re oil and gas company, or you have less huge pipelines everywhere. You have assets that you have tagged and allocated. Assets get spoiled very often.

So some modem conversation, some bulks of some this communication, so how do you, let’s schedule servicemen throughout these network, right? So our routing can cater to all this. So when you say routing, it’s not routing of just car or bike or. So that is a fundamental difference in API first architecture is solutions architecture that’s built purely for, let’s say, a specific vertical.

Jaspal Singh (00:59):

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators Podcast.

Jaspal Singh (01:06):

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Mobility Innovator Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovator Podcast invites key innovator in the transportation and logistics sector to share their experience and future podcasts. In this episode, we’ll be discussing the role of artificial intelligence in shaping up the feature of mobility and logistics industry.

Our today guest is an amazing entrepreneur. He’s currently co-founder of Next Billion ai, a startup that provided location-based tech solution using artificial intelligence for the mobility and logistics industry. Before starting next Billion, he was leading Geodata operation team at Grab and was working as senior director of product. He has also worked as a product manager at Google and led development of several key product, including Google Flight and Google Assistant.

He was born in India, but has worked in US, Japan, and Singapore. He’s known for his expertise in AI and is part of for tech council and also featured as Fortune 40 under 40. I’m so happy to welcome Ajay Bulusu, Co-founder of Next billion ai.

Now it’s time to listen and learn.

 

Hello Ajay. It’s great to have you on the show. I’m really excited about this because we finally made it as we were trying to find a slot for, for some time. So, I really want to use this opportunity to know about you, about your entrepreneurial journey and your thought on innovation in geos special mapping space.

Ajay Bulusu (02:35):

Absolutely. Just very excited to be here. I know we’ve rescheduled a couple of time. I’m sorry about that, but I’m just glad made it finally.

Jaspal Singh (02:43):

No, but that’s, that’s part of entrepreneurial life. You have to hustle and, and I love that. So, I mean, I never mind that, so don’t worry. Now to start with, I just want to know a little bit more about you. I mean, you have a very interesting profile and, and I see you are very active on LinkedIn. But I want to know something which you haven’t published about your career on LinkedIn.

Ajay Bulusu (03:05):

Lots actually. And especially the initial days were not all rosy especially when you go out of college straight, right? So, I graduated, I give a little of background, right? So I graduated straight out of recession 2009. So chances to get a job itself was very tough. So after five years in engineering and a masters actually I had to come back home to India because there was no jobs in UK at that time. So there was a lot of struggle for a year, year and a half to get into a small company. Also, then I go to a very small company that does demand planning and forecasting called Steel Wedge. I don’t really talk about the initial days of my career too much, right? Everything starts with Google

Ajay Bulusu (03:45):

So there’s a lot of pre-Google to two, three years of, you know, hustling and just, you know, just making some money and just making sure you’re in the market and you’re not irrelevant. So then it starts off with Google. Then, I mean, I’m slowly starting out how Google didn’t end well for me, but Google was amazing for me. But that’s that story for another day. But it was like, initial times were very tough. But once we got into the market and got into the weeds, I think it’s been like relatively a good, interesting journey. Like no complaints.

Jaspal Singh (04:15):

Amazing. It is interesting to know that you came out of college during the recession time, because I can imagine it was very tough. But at the same time, it helped you to build something stronger because you understand the market condition and, and you start from basic. So it actually make you more stronger. And I can see how you are building your venture now and another question now, you not only started your first career after recession, actually, you started your venture after a big crisis of pandemic, another part of your life story. So I would love to know why NextBillion? When you were doing so great at Grab, you were at a senior position. Good point in your career. And incidentally, in 2020, you decided, okay, now it’s time to leave the cushy job and start NextBillion.

Ajay Bulusu (05:07):

So few things here. A we didn’t expect the pandemic, okay? We didn’t think we’ll start in pandemic with hit. That is the first thing. We started in sort of February or March 2020. We thought it’ll just be a flu if we didn’t really think of it. Like, oh, this is going to be three years epic then March the world locked up, right? So you are in it now, right? So yeah, you can quit. Always your company will take you back because you’re like a month into your quitting. But there was no way we were going to do that when we went out to think, okay, listen, we will do this. And the years that followed, there’s no regrets as of today, right? We are doing really well. We’ve learned a lot. I’m not sure the company, according to a lot of people, is doing like, as they expected.

Ajay Bulusu (05:53):

Like, you know everyone, VCs, everyone has their own expectations of how revenue should scale, et cetera, et cetera. But I think for us, fundamentally, we are solving a very tough problem. It’s not a copy paste. It’s not like you’ll go and find 300 location platforms there that do the same thing where very few in the world we are fundamentally reinventing the problem. And we thought the opportunity, we didn’t know big or small, but we thought, there’s a okay sized opportunity here for us to go and do something. So, and we were three people who are very good at what we do. There was a lot of trust in, you know, each other and very hard to find a team. So I’m raising an entrepreneurship. Two things are tough, right? First, to find a problem that you think you know how to solve.

Ajay Bulusu (06:36):

Two is to find a team that knows how to solve this problem. And both were in our hands, right? So we said, okay, if we don’t do it now early thirties, then we’ll never do it. So essentially philosophically it was more about when do we do it? It’s and the responsibilities will always keep increasing which we are seeing now. So I just think there’s no right place, right time. You should wake up one fine morning and say, listen, I’m quitting my job, right? I am going to do this. Only then can you become an entrepreneur. Otherwise, you cannot plan for three years and get everything right and say, listen, this is exactly how I’m going to set it up, then it’s impossible to be, I think.

Jaspal Singh (07:18):

No, that’s very true. In fact, that’s remind me of my time when I quit my first job. I was in a public sector and I kept my resignation letter in my draft for three months. And one fine day I just wake up and I said, I have to send it today. I was waiting to do something, plan something like you said, you can’t do it and one day you need to just take a call and go for it and trust in your guts or trust in your

Ajay Bulusu (07:41):

Yeah. You have to trust in yourself. Actually, there’s nothing else. Self-Belief is the only thing that you need. The rest will follow. I understand almost 95% of all startups will fail. We also don’t know how next billion will do, right? So we’ve never, we’ve never gotten into this thinking we have to become $10 billion company. We have to become $1 billion company. We just got into ring. Let’s have fun, right? Let us take this as a job that any way we would’ve done, it’s not like we would not have done a job. So let’s take it that way with higher responsibility and see how it goes. Right? It, there was no future planning or anything in our heads. We just thought we take it by the year and see how it goes.

Jaspal Singh (08:23):

I love that point because I was teaching a class day before yesterday. I was selling entrepreneur is just go for it. Don’t plan about valuation and money, because then you’ll never able to build something. If you really want to build something, you need to just believe the purpose, the mission you want to do, and just go for it. And rest all will follow. That’s a way to go for it. Now your fun part in life, like you said, NextBillion is your fun part. You are enjoying, you’re doing it something.

So NextBillion is a startup, which is focusing on AI powered mapping solution. And I don’t know many people understand that because it’s something which is hidden. Some sometime people don’t understand. Sometime people don’t understand how this whole mapping work. So can you tell more about the company and what make it unique? Like you mentioned you are different from other, the problem you are solving is not that big, but at the same time it’s very unique.

Sometime people will ask like, why I need NextBillion when there is a Google map. Like how different it is from using Google Map and why businesses should go for it.

Ajay Bulusu (09:28):

So first things first, we are moving away from this mapping sort of narrative currently, right? So I think it’s causing a bit of confusion that, you know, why didn’t run the mapping company in the world? So this is not, so we are beginning about location tech company, all-inclusive location in which mapping is an input, right? So what we have done for two, two and a half years is we have built a platform that can help us serve a lot of use cases. The fundamental difference between other companies and us is others build solutions on a Google or here they just took what exists and they start building solutions of routing, route optimization, logistics, whatever, right on top. What we did was we did it reverse. So we are first, we first. Last one half years built a platform for mapping.

Ajay Bulusu (10:09):

So where maps serves as an input into this platform, same way into the same platform that we satellite imagery that serves in imports three imagery, server, any spatial data serves and input. Okay? It can be a repo of sorts on the repo. You mix match the best of this, and you build solutions on top. It can be routed optimization, like logistics, B2B field for trucking. So what we are now doing, we are building more vertical specific solutions on a horizontal platform. So the next two, two and a half years, we’re focused on just purely understanding a retail use-case, understanding a transportation use-case, understanding a public transit use-case, and have this very nimble maps platform that we’ve built to build solutions on top. So essentially we will merge four or five or six companies into, into one, right? So you just, if you want anything location, just come to us.

Ajay Bulusu (10:55):

Tracking, tracing, tiling, routing, ETA, navigation, geocoding image, imagery, rendering name it map making, OSM. So whatever you want to build on a spatial data stack, you come to us. We sort of want to be snowflake or Databricks, what they do for generic data. Yeah. We do it for specific geospatial data. That’s sort of the thesis with which we started. The early mapping narrative was to prove some thesis and also win some customers. But now that we’ve done both and we’ve raised some funding and Nexus, we’re going to do proper vertical specific solutions.

Jaspal Singh (11:31):

Amazing. That’s great. Now it make more clear. It’s, so it’s not just a mapping solution, it’s actually location-based tech solution.

Ajay Bulusu (11:39):

It’s really IDs, right? So the whole point of this whole thing is only with location based systems.

Jaspal Singh (11:45):

So now you mentioned about this location-based tech system, and one of the key points for location-based tech is this route optimization. And I think it’s very important for transportation, for ride-hailing companies, micromobility, logistic, e-commerce, because if I can deliver my packet faster, I can do more delivery. If I can reach my destination faster, my weekly utilization can be higher. So, I would say the route optimization have a big impact on the business case. So, I just want to understand how this whole location-based tech can help in this route optimization. And it’ll be great if you can share some real use cases with your client. Some success stories.

Ajay Bulusu (12:23):

So see, I think there are at least 500 routing companies in the world. It’s not like we are the first, or we won’t be the last either in this the Right. So all these companies in the past were built, again, same thing I told you on existing maps platforms, they were not, nobody built a platform for solution. They built a solution for solution. Okay? Then they focused on a vertical. If you are a delivery company, I’ll give you everything end to end. I’ll give you a mobile app integration, SMS inventory planning, blah, blah, blah, everything. Okay? So, but they were still underlying, it was getting powered by the same problem. That is, that that’s there with existing platform. I can’t open close the road. I can’t draw new points, I can’t add a geofence, I don’t have any capability on the data front for me to change anything.

Ajay Bulusu (13:10):

So that’s why we, instead of rushing to building route optimization, the first year we first built this underlying platform, now we are building specific route optimization for hazmat trucks, route optimization for buses. Route optimization for hyper-local delivery, right? Because each nuance of this thing, the nuances will change, but algorithms slash the way you do it, it remains pretty much the same. Right? Like you may tweak a few parameters. That’s one fundamental difference. The second fundamental difference is the API first approach. All these people are integration and solutions. First approach, meaning I’ll integrate with the ERP, I’ll integrate with their existing data. Each one would take eight to nine months to close one thing, right? so they could not serve the small and medium guys at all is because they only are targeting at the larger guys. But currently we can serve the whole system because even a small guy with 10 fleet or a large person with thousand fleet and 10,000 restrictions, both can use the same platform.

Jaspal Singh (14:07):

Oh, amazing.

Ajay Bulusu (14:08):

So the API first approach in adding the parameter, configuring and tweaking the API layer rather than the solutions layer is no dev effort, zero code. So that helps a lot. So, these are two things we have solved infrastructure wise. Now, purely solution wise and routing wise, all the points you mentioned are extremely relevant. It’s very important that you have this for efficiency gains. You have it for bottom line, you have it not as algorithmic layer, but more a business logic layer on top. So all three things we provide today, right? If you know that there’s a game and staple center in LA, you want to close off the roads because you don’t want any of your deliveries or trucks or to go there. You should be able to do that as a business logic perspective, not algorithmic perspective. Right? So we can go and do that today on our platform.

Ajay Bulusu (14:53):

We have a route restriction tool you can open, and close roads time based on its own. It opens up again. Anyway, if you want to draw geos to say, Hey, these are the various geos in the city, I want my deliveries to go in a specific way. You can, you can do that and you can do all this in the same set of tools. There’s no need to go to multiple places to scramble to get this into one place. That’s what we are building towards in, in, in terms of routing, route optimization, planning, scheduling, dispatch. And the good part is a lot of the companies will focus on deliveries or cars or trucks. We can dispatch schedule, allocate anything that moves people. I mean, let’s say a security company. Like we have a use case right now, like you’ve asked me for a couple of use cases, right?

Ajay Bulusu (15:37):

So we have a, so we have a company that works with a very large security company provider. They may be route like at least tens of thousands of guards all over the world every morning and every evening on beat planning. We help them do that. It’s because doing it manually, right? It’s a scheduler that they just say, this person goes there, that person goes there, right? So very simple routing problem. Same way we are getting into asset servicing. Let’s say you are a telco or you are oil and gas company, or you have less huge pipelines everywhere. You have assets that you have tagged and allocated. Yeah. Assets get spoiled very often.

So some modem knock off, some bulb conks off some this of, so how do you like schedule servicemen throughout this network? Right? So the, our routing is, can cater into all this. So when you say routing, it’s not routing of just car or bike or Bus.

Ajay Bulusu (16:26):

So that is a fundamental difference in the API. First architecture visa is solutions architecture that’s built purely for let’s say a specific vertical.

Jaspal Singh (16:35):

No, that, that’s interesting because that mean that you can do resource planning. So it’s not just route optimization.

Ajay Bulusu (16:40):

It’s actually, so we are optimizing resources, not routes.

Jaspal Singh (16:43):

I think that’s the best way to explain it because that’s what businesses are looking how to optimize their resource, given less manpower available and less time available. And you want to do more. So with the resource planning, you can reach to more places. Great. Thank you for sharing that. I think that make much more sense. Now, one of the key challenge, a lot of agencies, or I would say delivery company, logistic companies are facing is this electrification thing. Like, everybody want to move to our electrification, but the problem with electrification is our electric vehicle is range. It’s very limited. And the other problem is the charging time. People, people are not sure how much time it’ll take to charge and how much time I can use this vehicle. So how do you think the AI can help to make mobility and logistic more sustainable and environment friendly? Given, yeah, like you mentioned your resource planning. In fact, I don’t know if you saw the Tesla demo day recently, the Tesla annual day, and they share how Tesla is using the trip planner with efficient routing. Now you can build your route map based on the vehicle range as well as the availability of the chargers. So you don’t need to wait and go for that. So I just wanna, how you think the AI will help in this whole electrification thing?

Ajay Bulusu (17:54):

Yeah. So, if you look at routing historically it’s been on shortest path or quickest time usually. but since gasoline network was available abundantly in the world, they didn’t care ever as to where the next gas station is because it doesn’t matter, you’ll find a gas station somewhere. So the input was very different. Input was just like distance, length, time, traffic, right? But with EV, there are other factors to consider. EV has I mean, Tesla has a lot of data on their own. So for them to build, it’s pretty easy. But yeah, not everyone’s going to start building their own sort of route optimization model. So now opinion, what’s going to happen is the input, same way the API architecture we have built, it becomes an input into that, right? You change configurations, like geocoded addresses of every charge entity.

Ajay Bulusu (18:43):

Like that is one, you’re optimizing for charge here. You’re not optimizing for time or distance. That’s one. It may be the longer route, but you know, it’ll give you a better mileage. Okay? So it’s up to you to have that call. Like, do you want to take a longer route with better mileage? Because let’s say the terrain you’ll have to take for the shorter path. It doesn’t have a good road, or it’s a slope or it’s a mountain. So these are things that you consider as you go into EV. So you need to work very closely with the manufacturer to understand what is the mechanical engineering behind their battery drain first, okay? And how much of this is geospatial focused? How much of this is terrain focused? Because see, in also in the EV or a regular gasoline car, if the driver is bad or erratic, you can’t do much.

Ajay Bulusu (19:24):

But for a normal driver modeling, if this person takes X road in Seattle, that has a lot of slopes versus why road that no slopes has, it may be longer. But they could have more charge. If that is the problem statement, that’s how it’s going to differ. So, AI will start determining some of these things. In terms of, is this the path as, I mean, obviously Tesla’s using AI to exactly determine the same path, right? To see whether hey has my Model three given a more charge over last week than this week based on the same route that they’ve taken in different driving patterns or a different route. So reach’s the same destination. Has this route done better than that? I suggest that then. Right? So it’s essentially what ways did for traffic. I think AI will do the same for EVs at some point. So, listen, your next charger is there, it doesn’t matter whether your route is that or not. You go via this charger, then you will reach quicker or you’ll reach easier, is what will differ.

Jaspal Singh (20:21):

Yeah. I think the important point to share is that Tesla has a big large fleet, so they can optimize their fleet themselves, but many other players, many other independent players, they don’t have access to that kind of a data. So what they have to do is they have to work with other third party player, like next billion to optimize these route. And the point you mentioned is it’s very important because for gasoline car, I generally take the same route going and coming back. But probably for EV vehicle, it makes more sense while going, you take a route which has slope downhill, you can cover the distance faster, and then while coming back you take a route which doesn’t have any slope so that you can save your battery or energy. Amazing. No, that, that makes sense and I truly agree with you.

Jaspal Singh (21:08):

The role of this kind of mapping and AI will be more important for electrification. Otherwise, we will never able to achieve what we are intending to. Now, one of the key points, you mentioned in one of your earlier interview and which you mentioned that future of location is decentralization. It’s not same one map doesn’t fit all.

So I would love to know a little more about what does, what do you mean by future of location is decentralization and how do you see mapping and optimization technology evolving in next few year? Like, what are the innovation do you think we will be seeing in this sector? Will it we see more use of blockchain or distal twins or, or AI or, or something else? Because every day we, we hear something new. So how you see that, that this technology will impact the market?

Ajay Bulusu (21:57):

So I think see a lot of buzzwords I don’t think a lot of these things will even come to some commercial tradition at some point. Some will like almost certainly. I just think the see the future is decentralized in our world. Meaning this is not a web three crypto jargon. It’s more. If you look at fundamentally how location tech was built over the last three decades or two decades people are data skiing. I’m going to collect a lot of data and I will distribute the data decentralized fashion. And this is exactly what happened for the last two years, sorry, for the last 20 years, where whoever owned data was key. But with open source coming up in a massive way, like, you know, whatever, when you see GitHub and things in regular coding or Linux in regular coding or operating systems, we are very in that custom geospatial currently.

Ajay Bulusu (22:50):

Over the last decade. Lot of work has been put into open sourcing, a lot of geospatial data. So the future, when I say decentralize this, who has the best software to keep this data fresh, to maintain it, to build solutions on top of this data. And I’m talking about the 2D world in open source, the 3D 5K, every world will become the same way because you cannot, you can’t maintain, if you look at Wyamo, they’ve still not been able to crack any logical country level, you know? Ride-Hailing issue. And the only reason is because you cannot keep driving cars and burning mileage to keep your maps fresh. You have to crowdsource of information at some point. You have to have systems to take in this feedback, keep it fresh. You need low fidelity devices, not like insanely decked up cars to go and drive it.

Ajay Bulusu (23:39):

And this is the only reason why self-driving has not become commercial, because cities change rapidly for them to keep up with the change of the city, they have to go drive again. So the whole operational bandwidth to keep it is stuffed. This also will become decentralized. Right? Eventually, your phone camera or your own camera will have enough fidelity to capture almost lidar grade images, pump it into a system that you get rewarded for via blockchain. Okay? Then you have reward system on the blockchain. Then you sort of go into maintaining this data and building solutions on top. That part of it, I agree, can get commercialized, but at a very large scale, everything else is jargon word. So you need to have a very specific problem why you’re tackling it. So there are certain things like rewards, recognition, as I said, like crowdsourcing, you know, maintenance of data that is you know, pumped in all this, I think will become on a blockchain. All things, all of this will become more and more decoupled slash decentralized. Rather than being decentralized with one big tech player. That’s the future is what we think is almost certainly gone happen. And we are building our solutions to like cater to the future.

Jaspal Singh (24:44):

Interesting. I agree with you like a lot of these jargon, but at the same time, what you mentioned about decentralization, about how to crowdsource information because it’s hard for company to update the map on daily basis. I mean, our world is changing lot of construction, lot of incidents, lot of traffic management issues. So you can’t just have updated data on day-to-day basis. So, what you can do is crowdsource data from different people and reward them for these kind of actions, like what Google reviews do based on different places people review and they reward them and, and they get updated data about what, what’s happening around you, whether that street is open or closed, or whether there is a new street coming up. So thanks for sharing that. And, and the important point you mentioned about is that how the whole, this geospatial data world is changing the last 20 year, like we are collecting much more data now going to the increasing penetration advanced satellites.

Jaspal Singh (25:38):

So we are generating tons of special data, but there is also issue about this privacy and cybersecurity and data privacy with these more and more data collection. But what I want to check with you is how availability of more spatial data has changed in recent years, and how can transportation and logistics industry can use spatial data to better understand the need and behavior of customer. I was discussing in my previous conversation with one of the public transit guy, and he was very excited about whole spatial data because he said, you can have much more understanding about consumer behavior with that data rather than just having a census number. But this geospatial data can give you much more understanding about your customers. Like whether they go to mall, whether they go to shop, whether they buy expensive stuff, whether they use parking lot, whether they use buses or train. So how do you see availability can help the sector?

Ajay Bulusu (26:36):

So I think the sector in itself right, is just going through a massive paradigm shift. Currently so see, location was always never mainstream if you look at it. It’s not like people thought location first n never almost. Right? So people always thought problem first. So as of today, a little bit of that is changing because we are collecting a lot of data. Nothing. Right? And only companies that leverage it very well was ways of Google that they had amazing traffic models they built from Android and things like that. But like today, every company is looking at what can I do with my location data, actually and there’s not enough solutions slash enough expertise in this domain to even make people understand in the world of ad tech and marketing, they understand it really well, by the way, for the last decade.

Ajay Bulusu (27:25):

Understanding footfall, understanding retail analytics, understanding who’s going to with store to store movement. So in this world of marketing, they’ve understood it pretty well, ad tech and marketing. So, I mean, that’s why you say targeted ads come to you very well on Android, Apple etc. But anywhere else, they have not cracked this problem. I think especially cities and governments are very, so their world is geospatial. I will just have some data of the city in some sort of a format and let it be, but like that is Singapore’s very advanced. Let, Singapore has its own map or one map yeah, it’s older map. It’s a raster as what we call it. It’s static. But yet they have managed to create a repository on a more visual layer of everything – Roadworks, schools, districts, routing, everything.

Ajay Bulusu (28:16):

So now we are sort of trying to work with them slowly to make it a vector and make it a navigable map. Early stages still. But it is the ideation process with them on all the sort of citizen use cases. Let’s say you have your own mapping app or just a citizen app. You are having the fact that you can push very basic things like this roadworks going on and A, B, C, D things don’t go there. There is all of these barriers free access for prams and older citizens. All these things become very easy for you as a, like a city government or a central government or even the federal government. Right? So we have been pushing so many public policy and government makers say, you need to have your own government sector map that citizens should use.

Ajay Bulusu (28:56):

Because you have the most advanced survey grade data that maybe nobody has so it is something that I think there is some sort of opening up happening, but even today, they’re more comfortable to work in partnership and just share the data with someone rather than building something on that. So I think there will change, there will be like a lot of use cases that if you want to build a smart city, the fundamental thesis having a map. Every smart city starts with a basic map on stuff. You build something smart, like be it 3D, 5G, whatever you want to hold 3D rendering of your city, you first need a good 2D map of it that you know how to use. So there’s a bit of educational barrier here. It’s just people are seeing these drone images and thinking, wow, that is sexy, but I don’t know what to do with it. But, so that’s exactly what a smart city is ready only because you free flying drone and render a 3D, that’s not a smart city, right? You have to render this 3D on top of a 2D understand location context, which addresses is what I’ll give an amazing news. Can China and all what they do, they know per building in 3D who all have paid taxes that year.

Ajay Bulusu (30:03):

because that’s amazing information. So you can actually say for this county, for these buildings, I have all the 3D done. Okay. And in this 3d, I understand everything in that context in the county. So I understand who’s paid water bills, who’s paid electricity bills, who’s pay taxes, that’s a smart city government use case where you can monitor everything on this one small UI (User interface), right? So we need a lot more how do I say, awareness? Like a lot more openness for these governments to come and say, listen,  I’m keen on some solution like this.

Jaspal Singh (30:38):

Yeah, I think what you mentioned is it’s super interesting use case of like, it’s not just map, but you actually build that business layer. And I fully agree with you, a lot of smart city, they just think that bringing tech will solve everything, but it’s actually how you integrate different things. Like in India, you and me know what are the different challenges. Like you don’t even have a basic map about the utilities, where the utility lines are and every time, they dig up something and they discover. Oh, we break something, which we never thought exists there. So first thing for smart data, creating those kind of a layer and what you mentioned about, you know, how you can have a better control over citizen, like how household data you can understand their behavior, you can map their probably income or spending pattern with that layer and you can understand how people will use. One important point you mentioned is that how people can learn more about accessibility.

Jaspal Singh (31:30):

Like people who are with small kid, young kid using pram or old people. There are two key emerging area I have seen all over the world, especially North America. There’s a lot of discussion about this accessibility and cities want to build map, which are not just giving you the best route, but which give you the accessible routing option. Like City of Vancouver is implementing this mapping solution for wheelchair user people with walking disability. So in 2026, Commonwealth came, they want you to search route based on where you can take your wheelchair or where you can all people can go.

 

And the other big thing is the wayfinding people with I would say vision disability, or they cannot understand the wayfinding. Or sometime buildings are so big, sometimes you lost in the mall because it’s so big. So the wayfinding is becoming too key area. What do you think about this emerging area is next billion is also planning to build something in that area.

Ajay Bulusu (32:25):

So same thing. So we want to be a generic tooling slash a location company rather than trying to build very specific solutions for our problem. Right? Yeah. So we can already build this way finding barrier, free access you know, routing on wheelchairs, accessibility primes in the existing platform. It’s just a matter of having the need. Understanding where, so contextually we already have all the software and the information to do it. So for us, we only will cater to folks who have like real scalable need in general. So easy, doable. Absolutely doable. Already done and proven in a like Singapore. Okay, I’ll do it.

We have the understanding, it’s because this is not a mapping problem. This is a location problem with data layering on top. Right? You need every curb, you need every accessible point, you need every blocker, you need every slope in the city.

Ajay Bulusu (33:15):

Only then can you route them? Like easily. You also have to make sure barrier free meaning, so when you say barrier, free access, it’s like some roads should not be extremely slow production things. So you need to route them in the most efficient plain fashion if possible. Extremely doable expert is already in it. So we are in all things location currently. We are expanding our own scope. Initially we were a little narrow in what we do, but as we are talking to customers, we’re seeing there’s a need in every vertical that we talk to, like oil and gas, microfinance, employment. I think location plays an extremely important part. We had a company; you wanted a closes job.

Jaspal Singh (33:53):

Oh, so distance based job, right?

Ajay Bulusu (33:53):

You open your mobile app just to call distance how far this job is from you.

Jaspal Singh (33:59):

Okay

Ajay Bulusu (33:59):

And so things like this, right? So it’s like, it is giving more context to the job applicant saying, Hey, if my job is 300 kilometers away, I don’t even apply for it. Maybe as an example, right? So if the location of this job, so things like this, we are seeing on our own open up like in microfinancing you have to do loan collections. So we have folks who collect loans every day almost and you have to go to a certain number of houses to do your evening beat. It’s a route optimization problem. It’s not a finance problem, right? So we are ourselves proactively getting customers who are asking us for all these things. So this year is purely focused for us, Jaspal, to make sure that we get our product right?

We get some sales motion going. There are many problems to solve with us as I spoke about. But what are the most revenue generating problems today for the company? Because we are venture funded and we need to justify our revenues and we can’t be in the R&D phase for a long time and then slowly, you know, build up towards this vision of what I was saying, that we’ll be the only location platform you need. You don’t need to go anywhere. Just come here, we’ll give you everything.

Jaspal Singh (35:04):

Amazing. No, I agree with you. It’s like always good to understand the problem and user you should come to you and say, this is my use case. Can we implement that? Now you mentioned about a lot of buzzword in the market and one of the key buzzword today is this ChatGPT or I would say Generative AI tool and VCs and lot of founders and companies are building up tool for that. I see some use cases for Generative AI for kind of finding routing for accessibility, wayfinding. Are you planning to integrate something with NextBillion ChatGPT kind of a feature or, or Generative AI?

 

Ajay Bulusu (35:42):

So I think for us, Generative AI is not at all how to say parallel vertical or it would not help in any way for spatial data. but like for example, crowdsourcing is something at some point we’ll integrate because we have a navigation SDK and using the navigation SDK, when our enterprise customers start starts using it, their end users will start giving feedback and we want to make sure that we are leveraging that feedback in the best way of possible to improve the maps. So that sort of integrations is what we’ll do. But I don’t think anything generative currently in our world works.

Jaspal Singh (36:19):

So it’s, it’s not for NextBillion, you don’t want to see any use case right now

Ajay Bulusu (36:26):

As of today? No.

Jaspal Singh (36:27):

Great. And I agree. I think it’s a buzzword. A lot of discussion we are seeing today probably will die down, but certainly some use case will emerge, but not all of them. Now I want to discuss more about your entrepreneurial side because like you mentioned you started company during the pandemic. In fact, I watched one of your video on LinkedIn when you met your co-founder, first time in person after two year of starting company. cause you couldn’t travel and he couldn’t travel. So you both were in different countries. So you met after two years, and you mentioned some very important point in the beginning that for any successful business, two things are very important. The problem and the team.

I want to understand, founding team is very important. So how did you build your team? How did you find your co-founder and what is your feedback for other entrepreneur who is, who’s looking to start business that how they can build a quality?

Ajay Bulusu (37:20):

So very difficult question. I think many people ask, have asked me this, how do you guys work the way you do? I’ll tell you the two things that we have, I have at least seen actually should never start with your friends. That’s first things first. I am friends with both Gorham and Charlotte. They’ll say the same, but we were not friends first.

Ajay Bulusu (37:46):

We professionally worked together first in terms of three and a half years of hard work where we would give very candid feedback to each other. If we suck at something, that’s the first things first, right? So we build trust over the years in first professional setting. And so that’s extremely important that you have worked with a person in the past and worked in a capacity where you can tell them. Hey, this is not working out. If you don’t have that sort of a candidness, very tough for companies to succeed. And the biggest reason startups fail, in fact is co-founder issues as they grow.

Jaspal Singh (38:20):

Yeah.

Ajay Bulusu (38:22):

So that part of it, we are very clear from first day that listen, hey, if anyone of us is slacking, we tell very candid, listen, boss is not working out. That’s one. So for you to have a team, and if you want to build a, like a killer company, you need that first to be very strong. That foundation. Very strong. It’s a 10-year journey almost. So you need to really like the people you’re working with and when I say it’s like a marriage almost, right? You need to like them day in, day out. Not a transactional thing.

Jaspal Singh (38:49):

Yes

Ajay Bulusu (38:49):

So second most important thing is having personalities that match. and third of course, each one of you should have very clear vetoes on your roles and skillset sets. We still do not have a CEO if you go to our Linkedin, we just have co-founder titles.

Jaspal Singh (39:07):

Ah, okay.

Ajay Bulusu (39:08):

We don’t intend to ever have, I mean Sharon is the CTO, it’s very clear. But when me and Gora, we are very like, Hey, listen, we are just co-founders, right? but we have clear readers. Goro is all things product because he’s the best. And I’m all things investor relations, sales, marketing, BD, legal, everything else, right? So those pseudos we do CEO, sorry, CPO, CTO, CEO sort of roles. We’ve never put titles. Okay. You, and that’s very cultural for us. Also we’ve never liked titles in our life. It necessarily brings up competition who’s bigger, all these things, right? So yeah, we’ve kept these things pretty open. So you need to be very open with each other in terms of actually building a good team. And we have also, before starting a, we are also written a huge philosophical document, right?

Ajay Bulusu (39:52):

Like, so listen, why are we doing this? You know, what’s your exit plan? Why is it that you’re doing this at this stage of your life? So, being older founders, maybe we are a little bit more structured and mature in what we do, right? So, these are things that are very crucial, important. I’ve seen all sorts of co-founder troubles at least through my friend circle and my network. I am very blessed to have two very good co-founders. I still think that a lot of my life becomes very easy because we blindly trust each other in everything because we understand capabilities, we understand our own shortcomings. And we are very mature about all this. So, I think these are three key things that you need to look for in a partner. In a partner. I also think you can’t go looking for a co-founder. I would never do it. I would only do it as somebody who I gel with at work.

Jaspal Singh (40:44):

I think the point you mentioned, in fact I wrote an article about this finding a co-founder. And the point you mentioned about is that have that candidate relationship and openly telling each other what is wrong, what is good, and building, having trust. And I love, in fact, I mentioned you as a CEO, but now I realize, okay, that’s not the case. You are co-founder and, and Gora is also co-founder, right? You both share responsibility. And so now one of the key challenges like you mentioned, you started your company in Singapore, but you have now team in different part of the world right now you are in US itself to make for sale pitch and, and meet different partner investors and all. What are some of the biggest challenges you face as a co-founder? I would not say CEO of a company, but co-founder of a fast growing startup, and how have you navigated them? It’s like you started during pandemic, you can’t able to travel, meet the people you hired employee because you got funding early. So, you need to expand, you need to build the product. How did you manage this fast-growing startup and what are the challenge you’re facing, which you still are struggling to solve?

Ajay Bulusu (41:53):

So I think all of us were techies. Meaning we have engineering degrees. I am a very bad engineer, but it is, neither two founders are absolute techies as well. So I think we knew product and stuff very well. We knew what built exactly how to solve the problem. But what we didn’t understand as the marketing, sales, GTM is this, this feels, even today we don’t know it. We’ve learned a lot, but it’s not like we have cracked reputable sales motion in NextBillion. It’s still crappy. It’s still here and there. In all fairness, we are just two and a half years old. So, I think early still for SaaS, but we need to crack this motion open, understand enterprise needs, understand how to close enterprise deals. This is verticals that we have not really I still think is this year. I am personally that’s where the US now also to spend time and understand what to do, right? learn. And only then can we, I think open up this massive time that we think is there for this vertical. So I think where you also, I’m understanding now is understanding business context and selling tech is way more important than just building technology.

Jaspal Singh (43:04):

Oh yeah.

Ajay Bulusu (43:05):

It’s easy to build technologies, very tough to sell it. So this is something that I have learned over the last two and half years, and there’s no shame in accepting that. It’s obviously not been great in terms of learning on how to sell reputably. So we are now learning, and I also am very confident in our team that once we put our heads together, we’ll solve it. So the one thing that I hold very highly of us is like we may not be this trail brazing, startup, etc. But our team is just absolutely fantastic. We picked our people. Since all of us worked at least 10-12 years in our careers, we have chosen some of the best that we have worked with in, in setting up this 75 sort of, you know, core member team that we’ve set up.

Ajay Bulusu (43:47):

So I think that is something, again, that’s very important. Your early stages, you are having a great team and you understanding that it’s a hustle world, it’s not going to be a structured nice fun job is very crucial, even for your employees. You need to be very frank and say, listen, things change rapidly. Things change weekly. I’m not saying we’ll pivot our product and suddenly from maps become location and from location become some generative. So, we will be following through on this vision. But the way we reach that goal is going to be very scrappy.

Jaspal Singh (44:20):

And that’s how the way the startup journey is, you have to figure out on the way. You can’t just wait

Ajay Bulusu (44:26):

And not everyone’s cut out for it. Huh? Like, trust me when I say it very few people are cut out for this level of things change. Like many get frustrated, many, listen, I can’t do this. It’s really, it’s not my cup of tea. But if you enjoy it, it is the most fun thing you can do.

Jaspal Singh (44:46):

Oh yeah, it’s. I should recommend you to read this book the Lego story. It’s a story about how Lego Company was built and like you mentioned the original founder, he was a product guy. He has zero clue about sale. He can’t collect money, he can’t talk to people. But his son, one of his sons, third son, he was like marketing guy. He has no idea about product, but he was marketing guy. So that’s how the company form is like, once they build the product, they had a good product and then he came into the picture, and he sell it. And, and I feel like you mentioned both things are important for business. You need to have a good product and you need to have a good sale team so that you can, you can sell it out what you have built, but I think you will figure out you just need to hustle.

Ajay Bulusu (45:29):

Correct.

Jaspal Singh (45:30):

Now, NextBillion closed a big series B round of $21 million last year, which is great. So big congratulations to you because during that time everything was slowing down and you managed to pull it off. What are your plans for next to three years? How do you see NextBillion growing in next to three year and how you’re planning to use this funding?

Ajay Bulusu (45:49):

I think for us, the biggest area sales, as I said, I mean I’m going to keep repeating it, we’re obsessed with it now. It’s to crack sales, meaning crack customers. It is to crack the sales process. If nothing for our own learning, it is not about going and cracking one customer somewhere. How do I crack one and then crack hundred on top? Right. So understanding the process, understanding activations, understanding the post customer’s journey, understanding customer success, understanding the post building of product journey is where we are focusing and investing our time and whatever the capital we raised, right? We as a company have never hired too many, so we only hire as needed. So that way I don’t think we’re going to massively go and invest in hiring and scaling teams globally. We’re just going to keep it nimble, slow, and very fast moving.

Ajay Bulusu (46:33):

Sorry, slow meaning small. So that’s what we are going to do. I think also where we are going to focus a lot of our energy this year is going to be in positioning and branding the company also. Because as of today it was, it was very like, Hey, you are you are another mapping platform. So we are trying to say, listen, that’s just the input into the mapping platform. So we’ll spend a lot of our time in educating the market as I was talking about, making them understand why location is important, this is what we’re going to spend time on.

Jaspal Singh (47:02):

That’s why we are recording this. Also, we can share with more people. I think it’s important. It’s to be honest in our discussion, even I learn a lot of new things and I understand it’s not about mapping solution, it’ about how to solve the business problem. Business case, like you mentioned about security agency, you mentioned about Maintenance staff, you mentioned about last mile logistic, hyper-local delivery and electric vehicle. How the planning can be done much better and why this kind of solution is acquired. Because not everybody has access to millions of vehicles. Like not everybody has access to Tesla fleet, which can plan their own fleet and which can do stuff. So it’s very important. So thanks for sharing that.

Now this is my last question and it’s basically, I want to understand because you are part of a lot of these like you’re part of Forbe tech council, you’re part of a lot of other forums where you discuss about how the world is changing and what are the new technology coming up. So how do you see the use of AI technologies going to transform mobility, all logistic world in next five to 10 years? And what is the role do you see next billion will be playing in that transformation?

Ajay Bulusu (48:09):

I think, AI has already been transforming logistics and mobility for a long time now, actually under the hood. Like you never see it, but if you see basic information like incidents, traffic rerouting, anything that you see today, it all happens using AI and all happens using data that’s being collected from you even without your knowledge. So I think eventually with this whole access to data being more and more limited as we progress I think big tech’s influence on this is going to become a little tougher, right? So I think what’s going to happen is either companies that are independent, like NextBillion that are small or other companies in this vertical they will have access to very niche data with consent of enterprises and customer or governments. Then it’ll be a more dedicated problem-solving AI focus and generic AI focus.

Ajay Bulusu (49:01):

It’s going to be very specifically as how do I reduce carbon footprint of my trucking network? Reducing AI, that’s going to be the problem we’ll be solving, rather than how do I optimize truck routing in the US? Right?

So, AI is going to be used for more niche use-cases than a very generic build. That’s where I think I am seeing this, at least like my conversations with other folks is that that’s what’s going to happen. And two other things is going to happen is access to data is going to get very limited for everyone to distribute. So the company that works with other companies and shares this data in a way that’s useful for a specific problem, that’s going to be the, like the a second switch that’s going to happen because even consumers will start consenting No. To sharing their location data as an example.

Ajay Bulusu (49:55):

Already Apple has put this in their own operating system. So all of this is going to become more restricted than open. It’s not like you can grade all anyone, like, you know, it is to happen eight, nine years back. So I think with all of these paradigm shifts, it is going to be very important for a companies like ours and even bigger companies through understanding and modeling their own business models in this way that hey, data will be free, abundantly available, but for the right people. So we also think to do any AI, the most important thing is obviously training data.. And access to training data all these years was only with fine companies.

Jaspal Singh (50:30):

Yeah.

Ajay Bulusu (50:31):

But now everyone has data. So how do you model this data for specific use cases? How do you make it usable? Is what is going to change in the next five – seven years rather than I have the best data, I’m the best.

So, these are some huge shifts that are going to happen over the next three to five years. I think 10 is too long and 10 many things will change. Yeah. But next three to five, I think these are first building blocks that are going to change.

Jaspal Singh (50:57):

Well, that’s very interesting because I mean, a lot of people think there’ll be lot of data in the future. I mean, yes, you are saying there’ll be a lot of data in the future, but it’ll be very specific. So, it’ll be right for the right user. It is not anybody can have access to any kind of data, because you’re right, people are now restricting data use. Apple has put this, in fact, Google is planning now. Google ad is planning that. You cannot get the cookies data of your website browsing. So they will restrict that. So a lot of these restrictions will be in place and it’ll be interesting.

No, thanks for sharing that. Really interesting Ajay to learn from your perspective.

Now, we discussed technology, AI mapping, and a lot of other things. Now it’s trying to learn more about you. And to do that we have this Rapid-Fire question round. We generally ask these five questions to learn. You as a person. So, whenever you’re ready, I’ll start.

Ajay Bulusu (51:46):

Yeah. Ready?

Jaspal Singh (51:47):

So if you’re not in technology and this geospatial technology or technology industry, what other profession you would’ve selected?

Ajay Bulusu (51:57):

I think I’d be a chef.

Jaspal Singh (51:58):

Chef.

Ajay Bulusu (51:59):

Yeah.

Jaspal Singh (52:00):

So you love cooking.

Ajay Bulusu (52:01):

I love food, love cooking. Even today, I think my dream is to have a small restaurant. So, I think I will yeah. If I do anything with NextBillion, I will invest some money into having a license, my other passion is sports. So, I’ll be very close to sports. I think that’s the two things I would do. As soon as all this tech AI stuff is done.

Jaspal Singh (52:21):

That’s amazing. Both are good sports and healthy food. So, it can combine together, probably.

Ajay Bulusu (52:27):

Cannot be healthy. But food in general.

Jaspal Singh (52:29):

Now you have traveled around the world and since so many cities, you have actually live in different cities, which is your favorite city in the world?

Ajay Bulusu (52:37):

I think New York City should be number one in terms of just pure ranking very closely for, by Tokyo, if it’s mega cities. If it’s the non-mega cities, I think Bora Bora Island is probably one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in my life. So, these are, yeah.

Jaspal Singh (52:53):

Amazing. Now, what’s your favorite book or podcast you want to recommend to other?

Ajay Bulusu (53:00):

I actually, it’s the most embarrassing thing I don’t read at all. I read news. I read very niche stuff, and I don’t listen to podcasts. That’s all I know.

Ajay Bulusu (53:11):

Not because I don’t want to, there has been not much time to do it. but I think I take my inspiration from sports more than books or podcasts. Most of my interest, I’ve said this for so many years, has been with very elite athletes who have stayed at the top of their game for a decade or so. Because sports are all minded at that level. It’s all just heart and mind. And these two things are very crucial even for entrepreneurship.

Jaspal Singh (53:42):

Yeah.

Ajay Bulusu (53:42):

Heart and mind is extremely important. So, I have mostly taken an inspiration from that, let’s say Michael Jordan, like Ronaldo, like the guys who stayed at that peak for a long time. So, they have specific techniques on how they do it, and you can try to emasculate a little bit of that, and you’ll still succeed very well because they’re at extreme top of their games. So yeah, that’s usually how I take mines sport at least.

Jaspal Singh (54:05):

Which is great because a couple of days back, I was reading one of the three from us. He mentioned how they wake up every day, six o’clock in the morning and work out for seven – eight hours. And you can only do when you have a bigger purpose in mind, you know, otherwise you can’t do it. It’s like same.

 

 

Ajay Bulusu (54:23):

Extreme perseverance. I think. So it’s because everyone loses. It’s a part of it. But how you come back is very important. And I feel that, at least for me, that keeps me going saying that. You know, folks have achieved a lot more in life with lot less resources. No reason why we should flake.

Jaspal Singh (54:42):

No, I can see that, because that’s what you mentioned in the beginning is you are not looking this for making it $10 billion or $20 billion company. Not at all. You’re here to have fun and that’s, that’s a spirit of a game,

Ajay Bulusu (54:53):

Yeah. If it happens,

Jaspal Singh (54:55):

Absolutely not, which is good. Now, what one thing do you wish you should have learned early in life?

Ajay Bulusu (55:03):

I mean, in life, I think, I should have learned very early that education is not super important in life. I mean, but we came from middle class Indian background in the nineties, which that was the only thing that’s sort of a salvation, you know, for many.

So, I understand where we came from in the entrepreneurship journey. I think what we wished we learned earlier was focus, which we lacked. I think in terms of narrowing focus, not focus, but trying to do too much because we had money or we had raised capital, let’s experiment. Instead of trying to double down on stuff that is working. So, the two themes for this year’s experiment actually are quality and focus. And lasted the three teams were, you know, like, let’s go sign end number of customers, let’s go increase, you know platform usage, revenue. We had these very generic things. This is super targeted. We just want to make sure we focus on things that are working. And quality of customers is important in quantity of customers.

Jaspal Singh (56:03):

No, I think that’s super. But at least you are now doing that focusing on what is important, and I think what you mentioned is very important because that was biggest lesson of my entrepreneurial journey when I started company. I was focusing on too many things. But ultimately, I learned you have to double down on what is working and rest. Now this is my last question. And it can be your personal life, professional life, but if you can change one thing in life, what would it be?

Ajay Bulusu (56:32):

If I could change one thing in life generally, I would always have always lived with the thing that life’s good. There’s no issues in life in general, however, you know, tough or easy it has been. I think the only thing I wish was personal life. Maybe you know, staying closer and spending more time with parents, which has been there, but it’s still not been there. It is a nagging personal feeling that I should spend obviously more time with family. But obviously going to work. And these things have been crazy over the last few years. It’s not been happening. But that’s the only thing I would change, if possible, that maybe I would stay even closer to my like family.

Jaspal Singh (57:10):

Oh, that’s great. I wish you good luck with that because, that’s the thing, everybody missed family and that’s the biggest support system you have.

No, thank you so much, Ajay.

I mean, thank you for sharing all your great insight. I really love our conversation and wish you good luck in your journey. I mean, I can see your, on our white path is just, you need to have more wins.

Ajay Bulusu (57:30):

That’s it. I agree and I hope we do.

Jaspal Singh (57:33):

You will definitely. Thank you so much.

Ajay Bulusu (57:35):

Thank you. A great chat. Thank you. See you. Bye.

Jaspal Singh (57:38):

Thank you for listening to this podcast. We’ll be inviting some other inspiring guest in coming week. You can subscribe to this podcast online to get the notification for the next episode. If you like this podcast, please don’t forget to give us a five-star rating as it’ll help us to spread our message. If you have any feedback or suggestion for this podcast, please do right to us at info@mobility-innovator.com. I look forward to see you next time. Thank you.