Optibus is an Israeli start-up that provides AI solutions for optimizing public transportation. Optibus Co-founder and CEO Amos Haggiag to have a chat with his father, and thus an idea was born.
His father, a CFO at one of the largest public transit companies in Israel, mentioned the inefficiencies he spotted in transit planning and he felt that decisions were being made based on people’s experience and not optimization or AI.
He gave Haggiag the nudge to come forward and try to solve the issue!!!!
The hint was taken; Haggiag and his friend Etin Yanovsky, CTO of Optibus, founded the Tel Aviv based company in 2014. They started out by studying data they acquired from different companies in Israel and developed algorithms and a product, which resulted in Optibus raising $160 million and has powered transit planning and operations in almost 500 countries across the world.
Optibus starts with planning, says Haggiag. This includes configuring the routes, directions, frequencies and time tables of the buses. Then, they move on to resource allocation; how many vehicles are needed, when will the drivers arrive, what kind of vehicles are needed, and so on.
Then comes operations, like how to handle daily bumps. Optibus allows people to enter all these parameters and optimizes the network automatically. This is a way better option than to manually enter data on excel sheets.
Public transport has been heavily impacted negatively by COVID. But for Optibus, 2020 had been a positive year. Optibus’ purpose is to make life easier for public transit workers, and during these tough times, it helped them limit passengers, cancel routes, open and close school bus routes, etc. All things transportation became dynamic and easy to manage.
Further, Optibus plans to expand to more countries. Haggiag says that they are working on investing and creating more new products.
Interested may kindly contact the Israeli Trade and Economic Mission in Bangalore at Veshalakshe.Gajaraj@israeltrade.gov.il
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