Mobility Innovators

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([00:00]):

So I think that technology today, technology is not a problem at all. The people ask me, I said, “You tell us technology can do it. ” That’s not a problem at all. The problem is more and more as I’ve been part of this whole public transport ecosystem and talking to various authorities and everything being part of the presentations and discussions. I think one part is the fragmentation. The different operators, different modes, they have a lot of legacy systems. They have to do the backward compatibility. It’s very important. The problem is that typically in these bureaucratic environments, the risk averse nature. Nobody wants to take the risk. Nobody wants to take the full accountability to it. Because if you think about ABT, when we started ABT in Kuwait, it wasn’t mature. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there many places. I have given a numbers of talks about the pain and the joy of implementing ABT. It is not straightforward.

 

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators Podcast.

Jaspal Singh ([01:29]):

Hello, everyone. I’m so happy to welcome all listeners from around the world to the Mobility Innovator Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh.

Mobility Innovator podcast invite key experts in the transportation and logistic sector to share their thought about the key changes in the sector about their work and what is their forecast for the future. This is our bonus episode.

Today episode is special as this is the first time we have a repeated guest. Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj was on our podcast in 2022. He’s currently the vice-chair of Door2Door. Earlier, he was the group CEO of Citybus Group Company. Prior to the Citybus, he was the co-founder and CEO of Arnab Mobility, running a micromobility platform in Middle East. He has wide experience in academia, corporate consulting and startup in North America, Europe, Asia, and Middle East. He has recently incubated Sentient Cities, an open source platform helping city not just be connected but become aware, adaptive, and responsive.

I’m so happy to welcome Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj, Vice Chair of Door2Door.

It’s time to listen and learn.

 

Hello Dheeraj. Thank you for joining us back on the show. I think this is our second podcast after a gap of four year.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([02:48]):

Yeah, that is correct. Nice to be here again.

Jaspal Singh ([02:54]):

So I mean, we did our last podcast in August 2022. It looked like yesterday, but it’s now four years. So I’m very curious to know what has changed in your life personally and professionally last four year. And also, I mean, what are the changes you have seen in the sector, especially in the mobility space in last four years? I remember four year back we were discussing a lot of topic, but what do you see how the journey has been so far?

 

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([03:20]):

Those are great. I mean, the last four years have been very, very interesting. And one of the change I see from when we’re talking in 2022 to now is actually the intelligence. The way artificial intelligence has really made an acceleration. And what we are seeing in the last one or two years is the autonomy. The autonomous is coming on our face. We thought the AI will take time, autonomous will take time, but it’s right in front of us. And if I look at the personally and professionally, it has been challenging because now we have to de- learn all the things and learn new AIs. And that AI is not that straightforward, that you can just go on the ChatGPT and you are done. Every day, the new model is coming, new technologies coming, new offers are on the ground and they’re doing great things. And in fact, when we talk and three years ago or four years ago when we’re talking about digital data, now we talking intelligence, now we talking adoption, now we’re talking autonomous.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([04:36]):

And if I see in the last few years now, when we are looking at the mobility, that time we were talking about build a solution for the mobility, but now I see the builder ecosystem. Any one particular Mobility solution is not good enough to commercialize, to scale. We need more integrated and we need to integrate with the mass transit, to the micromobility, to the on- demand and all that integration and giving as a platform because without it, it’s very hard to get investments. So earlier, I believe that earlier the agenda was the public transport of mobility was for the public transport authorities and government, but it has opened up a great opportunity for the commercial space for the private sector. So I see this as an opportunity for working on raising funding, making it profitable. I don’t think that the old school, old traditional way of saying public transport will run with the fair boxes which is running under the losses now no longer the case. You may have to make this mobility profitable to become more sustainable and more accessible to the people.

Jaspal Singh ([06:00]):

Yeah. No, a lot of good point you mentioned. And I think one of the important point you mentioned about de- learning and relearning, because whatever we have learned so far, I mean the whole process and whole ecosystem is shifting around us. And this is what I keep thinking about. It’s not only about learning how AI work, not about booking your travel, finding a nice place or finding a good restaurant, but it’s about how in your day-to-day job it can impact. I mean, we have now open agents, autonomous vehicles around us. Waymo has becoming a big force now launching in the UK. I mean, you are in London right now So it’ll be coming to London very soon. Four year back, it looked like it is still decades away, but things have really accelerated. In fact, I want to connect a little bit some point we discuss in our last discussion.

Jaspal Singh ([06:49]):

I remember at that time you are still the vice chair of door2door and you are very bullish about on- demand mobility and on- demand buses. At that time, you introduced in many cities in Middle East. How do you still see the on- demand mobility complementing the fixed route or they will take over or I mean both will coexist. And how do you see the demand from demand is changing? It’s not only A to or point people are going for home to office, especially given your experience in Mana region, I also very curious to understand what is the acceptability of on- demand buses in MANA region?

 

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([07:29]):

That’s a good question. So let’s place the on- demand mobility in a city transport ecosystem. If you think about the transit systems in public transport are actually designed to absorb the peak demand and let’s keep in mind that the human side of it, because if it is not autonomous, it’s driven by our drivers.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([07:56]):

The peak demand typically lasts for three to four hours in the morning, three to four hours in the afternoon and you cannot divide the … Then practical problem on the ground is how will you design the duties for the drivers, which is a very impractical thing. So that’s one thing that what I’m trying to say is that the inappropriate or inefficient, I would say inefficient use of the resources because you design the public transport to capture the peak demand, but then during the off peak it’s very inefficient use of the resources. So a clear mobility gap between the mass transit and the taxi and the private vehicles in between and we call this, if you look about that as a city, if you look at the customer segmentation, we used to call blue collar, white collar. And in my last podcast I also mentioned we forget that on sector, which is we call it pink collar between the blue and white. And if I define that as the people who are in the early stage of their carriers, or I would say they are the powerhouse or the productivity of any city. Now they can afford. Their lifestyle is changing, their thinking is changing. You can call them in Generation G or Generation Alpha or whatever you call them. They can afford to have a car, but they have a different lifestyle needs and they need something not too expensive or to not … They need a lifestyle solution, which is not too expensive for me.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([09:41]):

Now this on- demand bust, what they’ve done is we provided them a service on demand when they need it where they need it. They’re tech savvy. So you actually order on demand on your mobile app and you pay less and it’s affordable. And in the beginning, we had a lot of issues, which is to make them understand that this is not Uber because Uber is still expensive for them and they understand that it’s a shared service. That’s why this is affordable compared to Uber, but it still operates like Uber. There has to be some compromise in terms of the experience, but it is not that much of. So in order to explain to them, we used something very interesting slogan. We said faster than bus, cheaper than taxi, faster than bus, cheaper than taxi. And immediately that slogan, that tagline clicked in their mind and they said, “Yeah, that’s correct because now I know why I’m sharing. Now I know it is faster than bus. I can use it when I need it. ” And if you look at the demand, demand has grown a lot. I mean, it’s exponential growth in the demand. Same we experienced in Kuwait.

It is no longer last mile, first mile. Actually, it has become a mainstream public transport and actually it is covering … So initially when we launched this as a virtual stop to virtual stop, there was a lot of feedback we received from the customers because if you think about particularly Middle East during summers, it’s a very high temperature, people cannot walk.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([11:24]):

And if you take this, the same concept in the Western world where you have it too cold, we converted that to door-to-door service. So it’s not do- to-do, it’s near door-to-door survey. So people do not have to walk for long. And since then, the demand has grown exponentially.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([11:45]):

Not just us, even the authorities are increasing the more operators. We are just completing the sandbox program in TGA at Saudi Arabia, which they come up with the new regulations and they’re inviting the most likely they will invite the other operators to join because no one or two operators can cater the requirements, the demand which you will have in cities. We are still a year and a half in Dubai under the pilot project, but we’ve seen a great opportunity. And then Dubai under their own service, which is on- demand bus, they are increasing the mode zones, adding more zones, more vehicles to cater that. So I think the on- demand, if you think about on- demand, the moment you bring the autonomous, actually it’s on- demand. So I think the on- demand is going to stay and it’s going to continue to fill the gap between the mass transit and the public transport and taxi, the mobility solutions.

Jaspal Singh ([12:52]):

And you rightly mentioned if you connect on demand with autonomous vehicles or with autonomy, one, you reduce the cost of the service, but also you can expand 24 hours into seven. So people in a future, it became much more easier to access this vehicle and maybe can afford door-to-door because then it’ll be much easier to plan the route and optimize the resources and network, but it’ll be very important. And in fact, I was reading a survey done by Ipsos and it’s basically say the Generation Z are more open to use public transport than generation the baby boomers or generation Y or millennial at all. So it clearly show people are more open to experiment reservice. And if you can make it affordable, comfortable, like you said, faster than bus and cheaper than taxi, it’s really make a huge impact. Now another important area which is close to your heart and I know you keep talking about is ticketing.

Jaspal Singh ([13:50]):

You love the ticketing application and you’re really passionate about that particular segment. When people hear about ticketing, generally they think about payment. It’s just mode of payment and you see ticketing very differently and recently you are talking something which is very bigger. You talk like ticketing is not just ticketing, we need to think a bigger picture. So how would you explain what ticketing really mean today? Because a lot of people think ticketing just for motor payment. And do you still think it’s a backend function or it’s actually becoming a brain of the system? Because I know you coined a new term, so I want to understand how you see ticketing can be the key driver for public transportation.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([14:40]):

Yeah, I don’t think the ticketing is … Yes, when we started, ticketing is always in the mind of the revenue generation, revenue generation, different products, offerings and creating more different types of streams of revenue and all that, but actually it’s not payments. It’s about decision intelligence. And traditionally, you’re right, it was tab, pay, go, right, that travel, that was the thinking in the mind. And at the same time, if you recall in the last three years, I’ve been talking about AFC is pivotal to the AFC automated fare collection, which is ticketing. It’s a pivotal to digitalization of public transport. And the ABT, the account-based ticketing, particularly we said, okay, this is what we need. But if you think about it, and we all talked about ABT is all about K by Know your customer. What it means is that once you know your customer, once you know who are your customers, how they are using it, when they are using it, what are their segmentation, what is their profile, how that works, that data, when you get it, you have so much of intelligence you can design out of it.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([16:00]):

You can create real-time intelligence. So the way I see it, the way I see that ticketing actually, this is how we did it. So there’s one more thing we did is that we digitalized the whole value, the service value chain from planning, scheduling, dispatching, ticketing, controlling, monitoring, right up to the clearing and the settlement with the other operators to the financial reporting. And the ticketing was right in the middle. So you cannot say recruiting all about the payment, it was actually creating linkages between all the intelligence data intelligence which you need. Now if I give you one very simple example in Kuwait, before the ABC and AFC and ABT implementation, we used to have 19% of the total of the kilometers mileage run in a day were the dead mileages. A dead mileage of 19%. And that was because of the inefficiency in the sense that you assign the duty for the drivers, you look at them, how long they need to run, how many trips they need to run and all kind of thing, which is the basically trying to guess the demand, not having the demand as in a real time. That mileage with the ABT implementation and the digitalization of whole service chain dropped to 3%.

Jaspal Singh ([17:34]):

Ah, that’s amazing. 19% to 3%.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([17:36]):

I’m just giving you one simple example. If I tell you that the 96% of our period past customers are using mobile phone, no longer we are selling the smart cards. And the reason I’m telling you this is very interesting. I was in a conference transportation global and I was listening to the TFL what they’re doing. They’re trying to introduce the barcode and they want to do backward compatibility with the magnetic strip. I said, “Guys, this is really, really insane because manage strips are environmental hazard. Why do you want to do that? Why do you want to go back to those sort of concepts?” So the problem is then if you use the magnetic strip, you’re still losing the KYC. Even if you see the way the implementation done in ticketing is go with the Apple Pay, Samsung Pay or whatever, you type up phone. You don’t get the customer data. You just get a code which gives you nothing about who is traveling, where is traveling and all that.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([18:49]):

So to me, the way I see is a decision intelligence. Now, as you said very clearly, I’m talking about Sentient. So Sentient means that there’s something which is the data is being perceived. You look at the data, then you analyze it and then you respond to it.

Now if you think about, let me give you the ABT currently. The ABT has definitely given us given the Citybus bust capability, they can design the product like at the backend, make the changes and it’s done in real time. You can design any kinds of products unit, but still it is collect the data, get the analytics, get the old way of doing it, but the moment you have is sentient. So think about this way that if you’re using a Google map and if you are using a Google map to go from one place to another place and there’s a traffic exam, it suggests to you another route.

Jaspal Singh ([19:52]):

Even during the route, it tell you like, okay, there is an accident and do you want to think?

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([19:57]):

Exactly. Now if you think about the ticketing is there is a disruption or there is something happens. What happens today that they will do a refund and there’s a process going on. Rather than doing that, the system will adjust automatically the tier pricing and say, “Look, you do this.” I’ll give you a very good example. I was looking at it. So for example, in London, and I’ve seen this as a canons rate in the peak time, it all of a sudden some events, maybe think about the events like a football game or Olympics.

 

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([20:26]):

All of a sudden the crowd happens and there are people going to the one station, but there’s other options in the transport. You increase the fare or system will increase the fare and says, “You know what? There’s another option which is cheaper than this.” Takes you there. So at least you can divert and manage that crowd through that the pricing changes, which is done on a reactive base in a real-time basis. That’s what I’m talking about, the sentient ticketing, which actually works like a living organism. So this is not living as it is not something which is you do it, you do the analyze the data, you react late, it is done only in real time.

Jaspal Singh ([21:15]):

No, that’s very interesting. Something you mentioned about Google Map, how they in real time they adjust your route, reroute you and they do similarly, I mean, when you use a lot of these ride hailing app, especially Uber and Lyft and other, and you can actually change the route in between and then it readjust your fare, it tell you what is possible, how it is possible and all. And I think you explained the Sentient ticketing very well. It’s basically bringing the AI intelligence into ticketing. It’s not just a static function or not in the backend, but you really bring it upfront and you can make all the adjustment through that. So like a real-time pricing, real-time adjustment and all. Now my question is why Sentient? Why it is important? Why you think the transit agencies, because a lot of them are still into ABT and other phase.

Jaspal Singh ([22:10]):

Why you think they should think about Sentient now?

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([22:15]):

Well, See the thing is the way you see it, the way that the acceleration is in AI, as I said, right? Yeah. And so what happened in the digital, if you think about it, when we digitalize it, we got the data. We digitalize it, we got the data. Now what we did is we used so far what we are using the old way of the business intelligence. What it means is we use a process called ETL (Extract, Transform and Load).

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([22:47]):

We use the ETL process with the extract and translate and store in the data, which is basically you take the data, you put it in a process, ETL process to put it in a SQL database and on top of it, then you run the Tableau or other BI tools. And the problem is because the SQL has its own limitations and your storage and computing has your own limitations, you cannot actually filter down the data to a very small size of data. You cannot take a lot of other data streams which is available to you and it’s not in real time. So when you come to the Tableau report, they come after a day, it’s already gone. But if you think about today, the word that the new tools, which is the AI has brought, and this is a new, I call it intelligent transport data fabric, which means you create the relevance of your ingestion of the data, means not just your data, but your live open source, open data, which is coming from GPS, from the Google Maps, from other services running around the traffic data and all that data is feeding into as the data streams.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([23:58]):

And I call it that as atomic data means today in door-to-door platform, we capture every single data the moment you open the app from there to every single top a customer is doing is being captured through the data streams. So these tools, they fully press you through the data streams. You can have any amount of data streams coming through. Now next thing you do, you do the semantic enrichment on the data.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([24:29]):

And I’ll give you a very good example. So it’s a simple example. Suppose you look at, for example, Google Map. So Google Map, you say, okay, here is your Google Map will give you longitude latitude. This is the longitude number, this is longitude and then give you time. It’s [8:30] in the morning. And then when you look at what it is, it’ll give you say, oh, there is a bus of this company. Now this is the data you get it. Now I’m talking about when I put a semantic on it, what we will do. We’ll put a cementing saying, this longitude latitude is actually a bus stop or a bus depot or it is the location which we put a name to it. That’s a cementing we put. And 845 doesn’t matter. 845 or 847 or 848, we’d say it’s a morning peak hour.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([25:28]):

And then when you talk about the vehicle information, we say, this is the bus number 12 on route number 201. Now if you think about this and when we give it to the AI, AI will run a completely different analytics, a completely different communication it’ll make to you. If anything happens, it says there is a bus at this bus stop in the morning peak hour on the route or the bus number is this, on the route is this, there are 50 passengers currently on this bus.

Jaspal Singh ([26:00]):

Do you see this?

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([26:02]):

So it puts a contextual materialization or context to it, which you can talk in like a LLM model in a query, we can do it.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([26:12]):

We have implemented tools where drivers actually, when they finish the last ride, the driver actually types literally speaks, communicate within the speed saying, “Oh, where should I go here nearby where the demand is? ”

Jaspal Singh ([26:28]):

Okay. So he don’t need to.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([26:29]):

Exactly.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([26:31]):

Yeah. And then this LLM model tells, okay, now you go to this space, in last 15 minutes, 50 people have been searching for your service because we are running in a semi-autonomous mode. I mean, autonomous mode, then it’ll be automatically informed and automatic recommend will go to the car and It’ll- Command will go and say move there.

But in a semi-autonomous mode where the drivers are still humans, but then once he finishes that you do this, he can just talk to that and he’ll tell you in last 10 minutes, this is where you need to go, which is nearby position to you. Do you see that? So that’s what I’m saying, that you need that sentient, you need in the real time and you are generating the data anyway. But the problem is that with the current technologies, the current way this is done, you have no choice other than filtering them out. Actually, today the BI design is, what I say is you’re trying to find out the things what you know, but AI will tell you things- Things you don’t know. …

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([27:31]):

Will also tell you the things that you don’t know or you should know. That’s why I say that and the tools are there and it will develop. It’ll go further where we are from here, but at least it’s a good point to start with.

Jaspal Singh ([27:48]):

Yeah. It’s basically what I see more as you put an example about not only conversational command with the app, so driver don’t need to pitch in and he just say, “Hey, my route is this, or I want to look for more job or which area I should go. ” But I also see as an opportunity, like you said, the things you don’t know and getting this data analysis done, doing it more in real time, not more reactive, it’s more proactive. So automatically the data will keep telling you, “Hey, there is a weather forecast, which is six hour later, there is a rain going to happen and this will disrupt the traffic in that area. So probably avoid that particular route.” So you said it’s not that you need to react. It’s not like after six hour when you are stuck in the traffic jam and ask for like, “Hey, where should I move?” But it’s more like the system is automatically in the parallel analyzing not only your data but traffic, the weather, even the football match.

Jaspal Singh ([28:50]):

So let’s say the football match has extended time. So now it will automatically say, “Hey, the demand is shifted two hour later or half an hour later or one hour later.” So it’s not reactive. It’s more like proactively keep telling people what’s going to happen. So I think this sentient and like you said, why it is required now more is because of AI. You can’t say that I can keep using my ticketing in the old way I’m doing it. With the AI, there will be big push and we need to do that. But I think one thing I want to understand from you, because not many transit agencies are advanced. I mean, many cities are still using paper ticket, but now they are going toward more digital format. And we see a lot of cities are now going for investment in ABT, account-based ticketing. It’s an old thing, but still for many cities, it’s a new thing.

Jaspal Singh ([29:45]):

Open loop payment system, many cities are still … I mean, in Europe, still many city doesn’t have open loop payment systems, so you can’t pay by your credit card. The biometric ticking, some of the cities are experimenting with biometrics and all. Why you think I think cities are still struggling to unlock the full potential of ticketing because they try to implement the technology, but I haven’t seen very good cases. You talk about TFL, but I would say TFL is one of the best system in the world compared to other city. So is it because of the technology, the culture? Is it ecosystem they don’t understand or is it above all? What are city getting wrong about ticketing transformation today? What they are not like you did in Kuwait, what do you think they are doing wrong?

 

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([30:33]):

So I think that technology today technology is not a problem at all. The people ask me, I said, “You tell us, technology can do it. ” That’s not a problem at all. The problem is more and more, as I’ve been part of this whole public transport ecosystem and talking to various authorities and everything being part of the presentations and discussions. I think the one part is the fragmentation. They’re different operators, different modes. They have a lot of legacy systems. They have to do the backward compatibility. It’s very important. The problem is that typically in these bureaucratic environments, the risk averse nature. Nobody wants to take the risk, that nobody wants to take the full accountability to it. Because if you think about ABT, when we started ABT in Kuwait, it wasn’t mature. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there many places. And I have given a number of talks about the pain and the joy of implementing ABT.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([31:50]):

It is not straightforward. So I think the thing is that lack of the accountability to take a risk or I would say lack of innovation culture. The culture. Innovation culture, which is restricting them to do it because if they have the right innovation culture, that means failures are acceptable. Failures are accepted and then failures are rewarded too. If you took it bold step, you did it. Otherwise, we would have not reached to the moon the way you see it. So that’s one thing. The second thing is the mindset is part of it. It’s still if they take it out, the concept as we talked about, that this ticketing is all about ABT or AFC is about revenue collection.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([32:46]):

They have to take that out because it’s not about revenue collection, it’s about the whole thing. And then if you think about the organizations that in public transport that ticketing is one particular department, you need to bring the cross-sector collaboration as a one single team. If these guys work together as a team, the ticketing, planning, scheduling, all these teams together, they will understand that kind of data, what ticketing can offer to you, it’d be so useful for your planning, so useful for your operations, you’re so useful for your maintenance way of vehicles and all kind of things. So that is a fundamentally, which I see it and another nature, they have to think that ticketing giving you the real … So the customer centricity is missed. So ticketing gives you the only interaction which customer has in real time is the ticketing because the ticket is the one where you’re going and how much he’s paying, how frequently he’s paying.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([34:00]):

All that information comes in ticketing, which is used in both sides of the service chain. And then this whole concept of the backward compatibility is a killer. Now I was thinking in my mind if TFL has to do the, for example, magnetic strip, if they want to get rid of it, simple that as an environmental hazard, nobody will talk. So the person who is accountable for getting rid of the magnetic strip can get it done in a minute just by taking it.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([34:40]):

Usually even the performance of the technology platform will degrade if you use the old technologies.

Jaspal Singh ([34:47]):

Yeah, I agree.

 

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([34:49]):

Those are the kind of hurdles they have to get out of it. It’s whatever you call it, the policies, bureaucracy, or the way they are structured to it. Culture. Yeah. And then the other thing is nowadays it’s so well proven. Now ABT and AFCs and they’re so well proven, the chances of failures are minimal, not minimal. It’s like almost zero. This has matured so much.

Jaspal Singh ([35:15]):

The technology while it is mature, I would say the policy-wise still cities are struggling. I mean, I remember I was doing one training at one place where we invited … It was a training on ticketing and fair collection. We invited people from different department of that agency. So there were people from civil department, from ticketing, from operation. And it was so fascinating when after the training, the guy from civil department came and he said, now I understood why the ticketing department is pushing us to install the ticketing machine at that particular location. Because earlier he thought we thought more from design perspective and civil infrastructure perspective. We never thought about customer perspective. So earlier they were putting ticketing machine back somewhere hidden so that nobody can see because for them it’s like, ah, where is too easy to get power? Where is it easy to get connectivity?

Jaspal Singh ([36:06]):

But they were not thinking where it is easy for customer to find the machine. So like you said, the problem is there is a one single ticketing department and not everybody thinking ticketing as a key source because that’s where the revenue is coming, but people don’t think more as a revenue function. They just think it’s one of the backend function. I don’t need to care much, but that’s very important. It’s very Important. It is not a backend function.

Jaspal Singh ([36:37]):

It’s bringing money. So one point you were talking again and again, which is about data. And I mean, all of us agree all these transit agencies are generating much more data than they can use. I mean, in our life also we are generating, I see you are wearing the Whoop band. So you’re generating data all the time. Why is that the transport system generates so much of data but still struggle to use it properly or effectively? And then how close are we to the system that actually respond in real time? Like you said, Sentient, probably in future you don’t need to think about how to use data. You just dump all your data in data lake and let the Sentient system or AI system to figure out how to use data in a different way. So how far we are to reach to that Sentient stage where we have real-time fair adjustment, like you said, the one particular line has a more traffic, so you increase the price and you reduce a price another, have a different route or managed demand how far we are from that reality and why we are still struggling.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([37:45]):

See, I think we are not very far to start with. I mean, I can say that there’ll be a maturity. It’ll go all and it’ll get mature, but there are data tools available. There are tools, AI tools available and we are using some of them in door-to-door platform. And so as I said that what we have done very interesting is that we have taken our AI system, which takes all the data analytics connected with the CRM system. So what it happens is that if you have a customer, you are interacting with the customer all the time by doing that.

 

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([38:23]):

So Customer Centricity is or passenger centricity is fundamental to it, how best you can utilize the data. So what happens is in this CRM integration is that if somebody opens the app and curiosity, he just poops it and he says, he leaves it. Immediately the CRM system picks it up and sends him a message saying, “Hey, you were doing it. How can I help you?

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([38:48]):

And we connected this about the automated board system in our CRM system that people can interact. Even if there are any changes during the journey or there’s a traffic, there’s a delays and we have put down everything is communicated to the customer. Customer feels that he’s sitting while sitting, he is in the vehicle, actually vehicle is talking to him

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([39:14]):

This is how you utilize the data. And this data becomes so important for you to personalize these services, understand the customers and making it more efficient and get the best out of your resources, utilize the resources. This is one aspect of it. Since I’ve been running the full city operator, there’s a backend problem as well. If you think about the fleet management, the fleet maintenance and running the fleet in a way that it’s optimized, this data is so important the fleet maintenance and management. If I can tell you then last four years, if I tell you roughly, I was able to reduce the maintenance cost by at least by 30%.

Jaspal Singh ([40:10]):

So reduce the cost by 30% overall.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([40:13]):

Exactly Maintenance cost reduced by 30%, maybe more. The reason is that we gone by a very much data-driven and the analytics-driven approach. Now, when you think about when do you change your tires, when you change and replace your batteries, when you do the engine oil and all that, there are some basic rules where the manufacturer will say, “Oh, after that many miles, you change it. ” But the circumstances are different, your weather season is different. There’s so many parameters- So utilization is different

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([40:50]):

And utilization is different and very interesting, you would believe it or not in the weather like Kuwait, if you’re running during the bus vehicles, which are running in the morning hours, evening hours are different than during the day hours,

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([41:02]):

There’s so many parameters. What we did is we use all those. We literally run an optimization algorithm to figure out how to optimize these. Our tire utilization from previous years increased to 20% more by using that.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([41:21]):

You don’t need to change it. You don’t need to change because your thread and how they’re doing it. And there were some studies we did based on the data, which was the identifying the symptoms that why this happens, why that happens. We had some buses which were having on the left-hand side, the tires were going, the failing earlier than the right-and-side tires. We figured out there was a suspension issue. We fixed it. So this whole gathering the data, capturing the data, analyzing it and then doing it, there’s a huge amount of the efficiencies you can create. You know it, the penny saved this penny earned. For sure,

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([42:05]):

And that’s why I think I remember once you asked, are you profitable? I mean, maybe this is one of the reasons why we were profitable.

By using data. Transport service. Yeah.

Jaspal Singh ([42:16]):

No, I mean there are a lot of examples and I fully agree. I think even in our personal life, if we have these Apple Watch or Whoops and other kind of a system, the idea is they’re not going to do anything for you. They are just giving you data and then you need to take action on these data point. But if you take action on these data point, your health parameter will be in control, whether you’re walking, whether you’re drinking enough water, whether your heat blood pressure is, or sleeping well, that’s another. So I fully agree. I think the challenge I see is many organization, they still don’t see the value of data. They still see transportation more as a traditional function of providing buses. And one point you mentioned earlier, which I want to highlight, earlier the world was where Passenger were looking for service, but now the world is where service is looking for passenger and we need to change this mindset.

Jaspal Singh ([43:18]):

We need to change this mindset. It’s like, how can we more efficient for our passenger? Now in our last episode we discussed about SuperApp and I know that’s again, one of the area you’re super passionate. I remember four year back you were very optimistic about SuperApp. You want to build a super app for Middle East and actually you had a strategy city group super app strategy. Are you still bullish on SuperApp and do you see the ticketing platform evolving into something like a mobility super app? How do you see the future of super apps?

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([43:56]):

I still believe in SuperApp, but with something new. And the reason, as I said in the beginning, that now we were talking about the mobility systems in isolations. And now we are talking about mobility ecosystem, integrating them and to bring them together. How would you do it? We need to bring the super app or then they have to be offered through one single app. I mean, mobility as a service, if you think I have not seen and I’m sure that you have seen the similar thing and we have not seen any big successes in that space. So that’s from the mobility point of view. But my point was that the mobility operators have opportunity to do a non-mobility, non-translate revenue. That was the whole idea of the super app. I still believe that those opportunities are still around. The reason is if you want to bring, based on … We also have to look at the financial services regulations.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([44:56]):

The financial, it’s having the open loop wallets, the open wallets, sorry, not the closed wallets, the open wallets. If you want to keep the open wallets, none of the financial services will allow you to do infinite transactions through that, because otherwise the services which is EMV operators will be gone. You cannot disrupt that because they are under highly secured, highly financially regulated. So this is more of a closed wallet kind of a concept, but not as a closed, but it’s a regulated open wallet concept. If you think about these opportunities for the operators to create these approach, which are in adjacent spaces, I’m not talking about go too far, go buy the cinema tickets, you probably don’t need to, but there are while you are commuting, while you are taking rides, there are services which you need it, which you can get it by them. I mean, those services could be designed around these non-translator. For example, if I give you the access to the parks, access to the museums, access to schools.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([46:08]):

So if you think about the school transport, why do the kid has to, a school kit has to have the three different access cards, which he can have a one mobile app which he uses for transport, for his access, can use for canteen, can use for anything to relate it to it. So that way I see this as a super app.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([46:31]):

It’s still important because if you think about it, that’ll be used as a orchestration and intelligence layer In the mobility services, that how the people use these other edges and services while they are commuting it. So I think it still makes relevance. It’s not gone out of my focus and advice.

Jaspal Singh ([46:58]):

You’re not that bullish, but it’s still, you see there is an area to integrate service. And I agree with you. I mean, that’s what we are seeing a lot of backward integration. So for example, a lot of companies are actually moving into financial services. Like I saw recently, my telecom operator, they launched the financial card. Why? Because they have a kind of a user base and now they want to utilize that user base and backwardly integrate with financial services. And why? Because then they can sell some other product or can partner with some other product. And like you said, in transit, we have a huge database of user who are using our services. So is there an opportunity to do it? And in fact, a lot of good companies do it. So if you go to Hong Kong, Octopus card, they have it. London, Oyster, they try a little bit, but there are many cities.

Jaspal Singh  ([47:49]):

If you go to Korea, they have a good integration similarly, Suka card in Japan. I mean, I would say the Asians are quite ahead in that.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([47:59]):

Knowle has it. I mean, I was behind the strategy, part of the team which will the strategy for them. NoL Dubai has it. So if you go to Dubai, your access to the museums, parks- It’s all accessible.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([48:15]):

Supermarkets, it’s part of the Knoll. And if you look at the Knoll is a good example because with the Knoll in Dubai, you can buy any transit service. You can use Taxi, you can pay for Kareem, you can go to the Metro and the bus, you can use it through the NoL, which makes it easier for people to do to pay for it. How can you make it easier for them to pay?

Jaspal Singh ([48:37]):

Now this is my last question and I know, like I said, super happy and not that bullish. AI, you are super bullish. How do you think AI will transform mobility and ticketing space in 10 year? And my key question is, and that’s what you were talking about, magnetic ticket, in future people will still buying the ticket or everything will just happen in the background. I mean, I see a lot of cities are now implementing NFC kind of a model you pass through, you don’t need to show ticket anywhere, it automatically directed from your wallet or from your phone. So how do you see the AI will completely change the ticketing space or mobility?

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([49:21]):

I think in 10 years we will not be selling the tickets. That process needs to change. I would say let’s use the word you will be subscribing to the services. Let’s use the word subscribing. Maybe the term changes to something else. And as you know, that already is started at the airports. If you go to the Dubai airport, you don’t need to take out your passport. You just do your eye contact with facial recognition because if you think about it, when you are boarded, you’ve already been checked in, your credentials being checked in. It’s all about the credentials checking in and deducting your money from your bank account connecting to it.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([50:09]):

So I don’t see that happening, as I said, that ticketing is no longer a payment, it’s more of a intelligence. And from the same point of view, it’ll be a invisible mobility layer and it’ll be automated through the AI. So the thing is that they will become authentic in the sense they’ll be aware, they will be responsive, they will be continuously learning about your behaviors, and then they will react to respond to it just like living beings. So I’m not seeing that. Anyway, if you look at the roadmap for any of the AFC, there was a standard published somewhere where we talked about the what is the future of AFC. If you see B in, be out the contactless, these technologies still exist. So what we are saying is that when I was working with NoL on the strategy, there was a concept we introduced as a future roadmap.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([51:21]):

The people who are traveling into the gold class, they don’t need to tap anything and there are no barriers for them. They just walk in through their facial recognition or the retainer recognition. They just walk in through. It’s happening. This is happening at the airport. This is now happening at that point and making it that seamless. And through the AI, knowing their behavior, knowing they’re all about the people, it is what is going to happen. It is part of the AFC roadmaps. It’s just that in next 10 years, once we get out of the magnetic strips, once you get out the pay Vertice, This is happening and this should happen in the next 10 years. So we won’t be selling the ticket. If we think about it, ticket is a very important thing, which in ticketing world is that validation is the word validation, term validation.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([52:15]):

For that, we need the ticket if you think about it. If you can make it validation seamless without anything or through your facial recognition or whatever, that’s it. So you don’t need to sell the tickets.

Jaspal Singh ([52:31]):

And I think two important point which you mentioned, and by the way, you likely said, I feel sometimes it’s weird because people are okay with having facial recognition at the airport, but then if you say you need to implement it transportation, people talk about data privacy and all other kind of a thing. But at the airport, they’re very comfortable, but outside the airport, people don’t feel comfortable, which is crazy. The second point you mentioned about subscription, and I think some of the city try to do these subscription kind of a model, monthly passes, daily passes, yearly passes and all. The challenge is how to convert, how to completely eliminate the single journey ticket. And I think that’s, like you said, it’s a cultural shift. A city come out and say, “Hey, we don’t have any single journey ticket.” Either you can buy a single day pass or you can buy a weekly pass or a monthly pass.

Jaspal Singh ([53:27]):

So it’s like a subscription. So you completely end this single ticket which can be important to move into that direction and how you can do the validation, how can you integrate the validation process into the ticketing? How can you make it easier so that you don’t need to do it again and again? Like you said, there are fragmented system. You have different operator running buses, different operator running frames, sometimes different operator running taxis and all, and it’s very different. So how can you connect everything that will be- Yeah,

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([54:01]):

So one point very important, this is something interesting is that when we talk about subscriptions, there has to be no time down, time limit on the subscription side of it. It’s more of a consumption-based subscription basically.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([54:20]):

So just like electricity, you sign up with electricity, you consume and you pay for it or it get deducted direct debit from yourself. So of course all these transformation has to have to have go with the citizens contribution or the residents’ contribution. If you make it like a consumption-based subscriptions, not like a time-based subscriptions, actually we are changing the same model in do- to-door now in CitiLink shuttles in Dubai because what we found that time-based subscriptions is that some of the customers were not very happy and we had to offer them a very large discounts. So you charge, for example, in the Uber Eats or Uber or Delivery, you pay subscription a little fee for $4 or $3, but then you get based on the consumptions, the deliveries and all that. So you just subscribe, you’re paying a little fee for subscription, but everything else is based on the subscribe consumption based.

So I don’t know, I mean, these are the comm model will evolve over the time, but I don’t think we will be selling ticket the way we sell it.

Jaspal Singh ([55:40]):

Amazon subscription model premium, Prime services, you don’t pay for delivery once you subscribe and then you can just pay for the product or service. Yeah, that’ll be interesting. I mean, a lot has changed in the last four year, I can say and I can’t imagine how next gen year it’ll be because the way technology is accelerating, it’s every day we are hearing something new. Every day we are hearing some new kind of a model, new kind of technology, new kind of LLM or AI-based system which is taking over and the huge investment is going into that space. So we need to see how the larger ecosystem will impact the mobility ecosystem. Well, thank you so much. I mean, really wonderful to learn this whole concept about Sentient ticketing and why it makes sense for us to think now given the acceleration in AI, maybe whatever we were planning to do earlier need to be rethink and think about more larger integration, not just a narrow.

Jaspal Singh ([56:39]):

Earlier we were just thinking about how to integrate buses with Trane and all, but now it’s just not about the bus and Train. It’s about how the whole ecosystem integration can happen and this whole Sentient model will help to do it. So thank you so much for your time and thank you for sharing this concept with us.

Dr. Dheeraj Bhardwaj ([56:55]):

Thank you very much, Jaspal. It’s always been a pleasure talking to you and let’s do it. Let’s make it sentient.

Jaspal Singh ([57:03]):

Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, please don’t forget to give us a five-star rating as it will help us to spread the message. If you have any feedback or suggestion for this podcast, please feel free to reach out to us at info (a) mobility – innovators (dot) com. I’m looking forward to see next time. Thank you.