Guided Drive

HB offers to protect and guide people as they drive.

Driving to the airport at midnight to receive your father, or taking that lonely journey to your call centre with an unfamiliar driver are not experiences to look forward to.

Especially not in Delhi or Bangalore, given the hazards.

Himanshu Bhatnagar believes he has a solution. A computer geek armed with an education from the University of Massacusetts and over 20 years of experience in developing turnkey systems for intelligent transportation, scheduling and logistics, this non-resident Indian is on a mission to provide "Safe Passage To The Daughters of India".

The project is aimed at using software skills to ease traffic worries. "On my last visit to India, I realised the immense need to streamline the transportation system here, and also take into account the security of commuters. I thought if my transport solutions can be such a success in the US, why not back home?"

In the US, he has been at it since 1999, when he set up HB Software Solutions, now one of the leading providers of software solutions for public transportation in the US.

What he did, he says, was use America's Global Positioning System (GPS), a network of earth-watching satellites that track precise locations of objects on the surface, to feed computers that could then work out the best way for vehicles to get from one place to another, given how every other vehicle's moving.

Bhatnagar's business proposition in India sounds rudimentary, but much backend work has gone into it, he claims. It operates via the cellphone, and grants the customer three main services: security, driving directions and an on-demand taxi service.

"A commuter just needs to SMS us the destination he's headed for, and we will send him the most suitable route to take. Then if he wants, we can keep track of him till he reaches his destination safely. If his auto or taxi driver deviates from the route and heads for lonely spots which we have identified as danger zones on our map, we will alert the authorities or inform the emergency telephone number given to us by the subscriber," says Bhatnagar.

While Delhi will be the pilot project, beginning this June, he plans to take up Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, in that order.

"We have tied up with Eicher to provide us digitised maps of the cities. But since security falls in the domain of the police, we are also looking at support and cooperation of the police," he says.

And how much would a subscriber have to pay for the service? Less than the annual bill for his daily cup of tea, he claims.