IIT Madras develops a mobile app to facilitate inter-city goods logistics

A mobile application called 'OptRoute' has been developed by the faculty, students, and alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras), which facilitates efficient and hassle-free transportation of goods within cities. The app allows the driver to connect with the customer and doesn't charge any commission or onboarding fee.

OptRoute Logistics, a start-up incubated by IIT Madras and co-founded by Professor N. S. Narayanaswamy from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Madras and Mr. Anuj Fulia, an alumnus of IIT Madras, has successfully developed and launched the first version of their App.

Highlighting the problems this app sets out to eventually resolve, Prof Narayanaswamy, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Madras, said, "OptRoute aims to solve the issues in connectivity between drivers and customers in the goods logistics and transport domain. The main issues faced are the unavailability of return load for transporters and vehicle capacity under-utilization. The current market of this domain is highly unorganized making it inefficient. It is also ripe for the deployment of technology-based solutions to reach the goals set by the National Logistics Policy, 202".

The startup has developed efficient packing and vehicle space utilization methods. These methods will be added to the OptRoute application once the company gains sufficient initial traction. OptRoute has two user modes - Driver and Customer. In Customer mode, users can request transportation services for their goods. In Driver mode, users can view all available requests and accept the ones they choose. The service is currently available in multiple Indian cities, such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Faridabad, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Noida, Panchkula, Pune, Mohali, Surat and Zirakpur.