Intro about Founders, journey behind this idea
Hiranmay Mallick Co-founder and CEO
Hiranmay handles the overall Business Operations & Strategy, as well as Investment & Investor Relations for Tummoc. He grew up in Orissa. After completing his Engineering there, he moved to Mysore for his MBA. Here, he got placed at HCL as a Management Trainee. He spent 7 years at HCL, moving right from a Management Trainee to the Area Sales Manager level. This is where he met his fellow co-founder, Narayan. Since 2016, he’s been an Entrepreneur, loving all the challenges, perks and learning that comes with the role.
Monalisha Thakur CO-FOUNDER & CMO
Monalisha looks after Marketing, Growth & Strategy at Tummoc. She has over 11 years of experience in sales, focussing mostly on audio/visual sales. She grew up in a family of Doctors & Engineers. She studied Food Engineering, and then went on to do her MBA. Before she knew it, she had a job in sales at HCL. This is where she also happened to meet her husband and fellow co-founder, Hiranmay.
Narayan Mishra CO-FOUNDER & CTO
Narayan is Tummoc’s Head of Technology. He began his career at PharmARC Analytic Solutions, as a Software Developer. After spending a year there, he moved on to work at Thomson Reuters as an Analyst. Here, the quality of his research benchmarked at around 99%. Here, he worked with leaders from across the globe. Next, he joined a Tech startup that looked into end-to-end product delivery. He conceptualized a profitable solution for the company which went on to become their flagship product & helped enterprises save millions of dollars. Having grown up in the buzzing city of Mumbai, he’s spent a lot of time on the city’s local trains. That’s exactly why the idea of Tummoc (Bykerr then) resonated with him.
Back in 2016, two of our co-founders, Hiranmay and Monalisha were working in sales. While traveling around the country for work, they realized something. They realized that India has such a well-connected and widespread public transportation system. Yet, so many of us would rather depend on other options.
After giving it more thought, this husband and wife duo decided to do something about it. Having a background in sales, they didn’t know too much about technology and its application. That’s where Narayan came into the picture. The trio recognised that with technology, they could address this problem. The plan was to provide a solution for short-distance travel to and from bus, train & metro stations. This would help people connect to public transportation. And Bykerr was born.
Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit. The whole world was faced by lockdowns, travel restrictions, and a completely new normal. Our co-founders took a step back and asked themselves — Why not do it the other way around? Why not focus on our main goal first and add first and last-mile connectivity later? So, they took the call of rebranding Bykerr with a focus on public transport information.
So, in the midst of the pandemic, Bykerr was rebranded into Tummoc. By July, the entire platform was ready. However, due to the covid situation, people were mostly staying home. So, instead of launching it right away, they decided to work on it some more till things settled. In September ‘20, Tummoc’s first patent for multi-modal connectivity was filed. They kept at it, waiting for some sense of normalcy to return.
As things started opening up, in January 2021, Tummoc was officially launched. Within the first month, we had about 5000 users.
What is Tummoc about ?
“Tummoc” is “commute” backwards (minus the ‘e’). We intend to reverse the trend of reduction of public transport use. The idea for Tummoc came up when we saw the widespread public transport infrastructure that wasn’t being utilized in various Indian cities. It’s that trend that we want to reverse. It’s a name we want to become a household name, and automatically associated with moving around in one’s city.
Tummoc is an app that helps people with their public transport commute. It does this by:
– Providing accurate information for all modes of public transport in a city. Information includes timings, fares, locations, etc.
– Features that make public transport commutes easier. For e.g. ticketing, live-tracking, etc.
– First and last-mile connectivity by partnering with MaaS providers and facilitators.
Challenges faced in the current transport model ?
Our journey till now has been full of challenges but it was all about consistency, how consistent we were. Also about the learnings and failures. Challenges were so many, financial , technical and product. When we started as Tummoc we got so many grants from the Government of Karnataka. Along the way we realized that no matter what we are doing our model is operational driven.
Hence we decided to re-create our product and we made a product where we wanted to co-exist and not compete with each other. In the same ecosystem our challenges only led to re-create our whole product with a multi-modal transit solution aspect.
USP of TUMMOC?
Tummoc is the only patented multi-modal transit app in India. It’s as simple as that. It is the only app that will provide multiple modes of transport within a city, covering every aspect of these modes. Right from first and last mile connectivity and online booking of digital tickets. We are building a complete end to end transit solution which will provide a hassle free commute experience for those who rely on public transport.
What technologies are being used for real-time transportation?
The combination of technologies that are being used for real-time transportation such as Web Sockets, Long Polling & Short Polling, GPS, VTU, IOT hardware devices etc. So when we give route suggestions from point A to point B. From MaaS we have the access to GPS based geo coordinates through the Mobile apps installed in the drivers phone or IOT devices. Which gets us real time information and for public transport mode we have VTU/VTS which gives us the location feeds on regular frequency and all of the data is pulled on a centralized server after every request the algorithms crawls through millions of data points in real time and collates together the most relevant and accurate route suggestions.
Most of the technologies that exist today make use of above technologies to track and locate assets in real time. It’s our core algorithm that does the difficult part of analysis which data points are to be considered on real time or requires data prediction
Tummoc algorithm also makes use of its advanced analytics and its prediction based engine to suggest routes when the real time feed information is not available. Our prediction model is expected to achieve accuracy of approximately 90%. This helps us in achieving real-time information on public transport modes.
In cities like Bangalore, Traffic is the major concern, how is this considered ?
Traffic is the major concern in Bangalore, Yes, which was one of the reasons why we knew how important it is to encourage people to use public transport over private vehicles. In our app we help commuters in planning their point A to point B commute. Which solves a lot of problems to save themselves from getting stuck in traffic. Instead of a commuter leaving early he can easily plan his/her end to end commute via Tummoc and get an estimate as to when they will reach their destination.
Funding Details
The company was bootstrapped initially for four and a half years. Then in the year 2021 Tummoc raised $ 540 K as a seed funding and currently they are working towards a series A round of funding. Initial investment is something which we would not like to disclose.
User base they have achieved till now.
We are receiving tremendous response from the commuters and have recently reached the 800 k users mark. Currently, we are operational in Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Lucknow.
Areas for expanding
Tummoc is expanding and will be going live with additional 15 new locations by the end of year 2022
Future plans
Our first & last mile connectivity feature is the most unique and how efficiently it’s been done for the users without them entering the manual details seperately second time.
We are also working on a feature in the app where users get an option to customize their rides with single QR. For example, a user can tell us that he needs a minimum walking distance for the first file, or ask for a suggestion where the first mile is not needed. And we give him all the options of reaching his closest public transportation mode without using the first mile. All this is a work in progress. We will soon be enabling such a feature in the app.
We have gone live with four more cities in the last one month, and shall be going live with additional 15 new locations by the end of year 2022. We will also be launching our Mobile ticketing system at six new cities by the end of this year for various modes. Last month, we went live with BMTC mobile passes and POS offline ticketing which has been well taken by users and are already performing well.
Few Words About Techiexpert
Techiexpert can help us to spread awareness for our multi-modal patented technology and make people aware that we are building a sustainable transit solution for the benefit of public transport users through technology.
