| |August 20198MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT- THE GAME CHANGERBy Kartikeyan Natarajan, Global Head ­ Engineering, IOT and Enterprise Mobility, Tech MahindraTech Mahindra represents the connected world, offering innovative and customer-centric information technology experiences. With 113,550+ professionals across 90 countries, the organization is helping over 926 global customers including Fortune 500 companies.P opulation spurt, rapid urbaniza-tion, and economic development over the last few de-cades, has put In-dia on a transformational journey across domains like communica-tion, manufacturing, healthcare, IT services, and mobility. Adoption of new-age technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Real-ity (AR) etc has paved a way for new exchanges between humans and technology, enabling them to har-ness tech innovations to multi-task and experience seamless connec-tivity. Mobility is a critical aspect of any nation's transformational journey. Building efficient transpor-tation across rural and urban areas is a major enabler for social and eco-nomic develop-ment as it supports other indigenous industries.Building `Cities of Future' ­ A Global PerspectiveRapid digitization that has hap-pened across industries at a glob-al level has rendered most of cities polluted and congested. The car-centric world which has largely remained unchallenged is now gradually making way for new-age technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to shape-up the transport system of the future. With passenger trav-el distance expected to double by 2050, according to the a report pub-lished by Alstom, it is important that all stakeholders- including the government, authorities, the academia and even the end users collaborate to strategize on how we can leverage technological advances to boost the effi-ciency of existing public transport system. All major economies have taken cognizance of the need to build a mul-timodal public transport system to efficiently drive the future of mobility. Leading tech organizations are al-ready making investments in de-veloping smart digital solutions that will help in improving the existing public transport and work seamlessly with both established and new mobility services. The solutions will utilize advanced data analytics and algorithms to predict and anticipate traffic flows and the impact on customers' journeys, to provide users with the best options for completing their journeys. India Story with Technology TwistsIn terms of mobility, India's growth story has been plagued by basic in-frastructure, which has not kept pace with the demand. According to data from the World Bank Data-base, January 2018, India's trans-port demand has grown by almost 8 times since 1980 ­ more than any other Asian economy. This huge growth, coupled with a lack of in-tegrated mobility planning across rural and urban areas led to the increase of private vehicle owner-ship in India that have rendered Kartikeyan Natarajanexpert opinion
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