Mobility and mapping have gained much relevance in the last decade, given the spike in app-based mobility services — food delivery, ride-hailing, and e-commerce, to name a few. However, present-day mapping services like Google Maps have a constraint, says NextBillion AI co-founder Ajay Bulusu--the product isn’t exactly built for an enterprise.

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“Businesses use Google Maps to get around but macro-factors keep changing every other day,” says Ajay, the co-founder of Singapore-based NextBillion AI, which he helped set up earlier this year. “The needs for enterprises are very different, and the fact is that one map doesn’t fit all,” he adds.

To address the pressing need for a more customized product for mobility businesses, Ajay and his partner Gaurav Bubna are working on what they are calling a “hyper-local” mapping solution. Their product, the duo says, will launch in a few months and will focus on everyday nitty-gritty in smaller geographies to offer enterprises a more relatable and relevant mapping solution.

“If the government of Jakarta, for instance, decides to implement an odd-even scheme for cars, or if Singapore shuts certain roads at the central business district to conduct Formula One races, our map hopes to capture these hyper-local alterations and present it to the user because this information is crucial to businesses like food delivery and ride-hailing which have to keep running,” says Ajay.

Given that existing mapping solutions do not account for these changes at the pace at which NextBillion AI hopes to cover them all, the company has signed up with 30 businesses for a pilot run.

Customization, Ajay hopes will be another key feature of the map. “Our AI engine captures the nitty-gritty of companies’ transportation needs,” he says, “We then work with the data in question, for the company we are servicing based on its own historical data. This lets us work on customer experiences, and deliver the product faster.”

The companies that have partnered with NextBillion AI are those operating in food delivery, freight, logistics, trucking, ride-hailing, and couriers across seven countries, including India. “Most customers are working closely with us to figure out how to integrate our map into their infrastructure,” says Ajay.

‘Grab stint taught us lessons in product development’

Ajay and Gaurav both worked at ride-hailing service Grab, where they headed the company’s product team. Gaurav held additional charge of ETAs and Navigation, at Grab.

“One of the key lessons we learned at Grab was how to build products across geographies — across eight different countries speaking nine different languages and possessing varying regulations as part of local law,” says Bubna, adding, “we also lessons on safety at Grab, including how one of our drivers ran into trouble with locals while collecting imagery for maps, which we decided to devote attention to at NextBillion AI.”

In June, NextBillion AI received $7 million in Series-A funding from Lightspeed Ventures and Falcon Edge Capital. While Ajay and Gaurav are hoping to close the company’s next round of funding by 2021, they say they don’t have a ticket price in mind, just yet. Aside from hyper-local mapping, NextBillion AI hopes to foray into facial AI and natural language processing.

First Published:Sept 3, 2020 8:59 PM IST