A technology pioneer focussed on solving public transport related issues in India, Shuttl becomes the first to introduce this technology in the country
7th September, 2016, New Delhi: Reiterating its commitment to making office commute easy, Shuttl, India’s largest bus-aggregating platform, introduces Near Audio Communication Protocol (NAP) a sound based boarding technology to its commuters for the first time in India. A single touch, feature, NAP in the Shuttl app is aimed at easing the delay in boarding. The technology will make the process of boarding and commuter identification easier and far more convenient for all the riders.
The manual process of boarding, standing in a queue outside the bus and physically showing the boarding pass to the bus driver is time consuming and inconvenient for the commuters. NAP uses sound to transfer the boarding details locally between two systems – the driver and the rider apps. The rider’s boarding details are sent to the bus driver’s smartphone through sound signals which is enabled by pressing the button on the app. This mechanism enables quick retrieval of data much faster than the traditional methods of QR code scanning or physically entering the boarding pass number. Boarding detection helps in improving the overall commuter experience, by enabling the company to identify riders on several routes.
Another major advantage with NAP is that the commuter doesn’t need to have an active internet connection at the time of boarding. The rides are normally pre-booked and a boarding pass generated before the ride is taken. Once the commuter has an active boarding pass, he can conveniently use the NAP technology to board the bus even if there is a network issue at the time of boarding as the NAP feature works seamlessly.
Introducing the technology, Deepanshu Malviya, Co-Founder, Shuttl said, “At Shuttl, we believe in solving for supposedly the worst part of anyone's day - daily commute, by leveraging state of art technologies. The sound based boarding technology, NAP as we call it, makes boarding extremely efficient and safe. We are the first Indian firm to adopt sound based communication at such a large scale operational problem. We see this technology to be extremely promising and are actively researching for more applications in our use case. “
Enabling its Digital India vision and providing a smart transport solution, Shuttl wants to revolutionize the way corporate India commutes to office.
About Shuttl:
Shuttl is India’s largest bus-aggregating platform that aims to make daily commute more convenient for urban intercity travellers. The company is based out of Gurgaon and caters to the needs of commuters in the Delhi-NCR region with around 20,000 rides per day. Shuttl launched its tech-enabled platform in April, 2015 and has been funded by Sequoia Capital, Times Internet and Lightspeed Ventures. We currently operate on 100+ routes with more than 400+ buses on the platform. Shuttl is trying to solve the problem of young Indians looking for a smarter mode of commuting. The increasing traffic woes and pollution has led to the concept of Shuttl as a greener and smarter transport alternative.