Citility collaborates with HERE on Urban Mobility

  • August 14, 2022
  • William Payne

Indian urban mobility platform Citility is collaborating with digital mapping firm HERE to provide Indian cities, state governments and transport agencies with enhanced urban transport planning and management. The first implementation is providing city authorities and transport agencies in Surat, Kolkata and Bangalore with streamlined city transport and traffic management to cut urban pollution and reduce traffic congestion. The integration with HERE’s APIs and location services will also be applied to use cases such as fleet management, smart city parking and logistics.

The Citility platform combines data from various sources to provide city and state authorities and agencies with an integrated view to tackle urban mobility, traffic and pollution issues within cities and other urban areas. A mobile app also provides users with suggestions for the fastest, safest and greenest routes available. Users can also be awarded carbon credits — in the form of coupons or discounts on transport tickets — for taking greener routes.

With integration with HERE location services, the Citility mobile app has been refreshed to provide users with commute information such as precise Estimated Times of Arrival (ETA), the amount of time spent commuting, the amount of carbon emissions produced for each route, and even the calories that might consumed on selected routes.

Shampa Choudhury, Co-Founder and CEO of Citility said, “At Citility, we strongly believe that having a multimodal transit and transportation network is the future of sustainable urban mobility. HERE Technologies has demonstrated strong product expertise, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with the leading mapping platform to improve our mobility solutions for cities and citizens alike. This sets us up on the right path to support India’s net-zero emissions target.”

Citility has recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with India’s Ministry of Home and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to host the mobile application at the India Urban Observatory with Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) to promote carbon free rides in cities like Bangalore, Delhi, and other tier one Indian cities. The application will also be integrated with the National Common Mobility Card, and supported by Surat Smart City Development Limited (SSCDL).

Anjum Parwez, Managing Director at Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) said, “Bangalore is the city of innovation with a favorable entrepreneurial ecosystem and financial environment to establish and grow a business. BMRCL is happy to support Citility by enabling them to leverage our data to provide commuters with the best, safest or the most sustainable route to arrive at their destinations.”

Apart from its mobile app, Citility is also integrating location functionalities from HERE – such as Map Rendering, Geocoding and Search, Routing, Transit, Tour Planning, and Positioning – to provide city authorities with comprehensive, real-time location data across systems via a central dashboard. This dashboard will provide deeper insights and real-time intelligent indexes on the level of road safety, traffic efficiency, and air pollution within cities to encourage the efficient movement of goods and people. The insight from this dashboard can be applied to decarbonise transportation and reduce overall congestion. In the long run, Citility also plans to roll out carbon credits and offer Carbon Credit-as-a-service to businesses and end users.

Neil Shah, Vice President of Research at Counterpoint Research said, “Although the Indian government has set a net zero goal for 2070 with respect to carbon emissions by laying the foundation with policies and support for several ‘carbon-free’ mobility initiatives, it is strong public-private partnerships across the broader ecosystem that will be key to realising this goal. Precise location intelligence is needed in order to accelerate things further. Players such as HERE Technologies will be instrumental in helping the Indian ecosystem offer cutting-edge technology to achieve the government’s net zero goals.”

Sachin Thukral, Head of Partner & Alliances, Asia Pacific at HERE Technologies said, “Citility and HERE both share a common mission to foster safe and sustainable mobility within cities. We’re proud that our collaboration is setting the stage for future multimodal innovative partnerships, which is a key step to create the momentum needed to future-proof India’s mobility. With HERE location services, we’ll be able to support the government, mobility providers, and industry bodies to create better mobility options for citizens.”