The transport sector is a significant contributor to air pollution in urban areas and it accounts for over 40 per cent of India’s carbon emissions. However, a lot needs to be done to solve this issue. Especially because of consumer apathy and greening costs which pose a constraint in promoting environment-friendly and sustainable practices in the highly fragmented logistics industry, which comprises many small private players. To make it easier for logistics and transport companies, four students from Mumbai's NMIMS deemed-to-be University have come up with a low-cost solution — a free of cost web app for logistics operators to choose the best-suited truck for a particular journey for transporting goods thus decreasing carbon emissions.
The four-member team — The Right Truck — had both MBA Tech, Computer Engineering students from the NMIMS Navi Mumbai campus and was hosted by the two countries. Kushal Chinchanikar, Gaurav Thakur, Prabuddha Tamhane and Pavitr Kochar created the app as part of a 42-hour digital Sweden-India Mobility Hackathon. "Pollution caused by transportation is huge, it is necessary to reduce the emissions. We cannot ask logistics companies, transporters to purchase new trucks, that won't help, they can't afford to invest such a huge amount in buying new vehicles. In their existing fleet, we can select the best-suited truck for a particular journey according to the route. For example, in our current web app prototype, we have made it in such a way that user can enter the source city and the destination city and then our web app will calculate the distance between them, the altitude difference, various other factors like road length, gradient, altitude, age of the truck, weather, etc. And accordingly, it will also determine if the route has characteristics of generating high pollution. In that case, we will send the right truck suited for that route," explained Kushal. The team also won the Fast and Greenious Challenge in the category of sustainable logistics at the hackathon.
The web app will also help calculate real-time traffic factor. The first-year students have currently created a working prototype. "This is still in the prototype stage and we have to make a few modifications. We haven't finalised every feature. The app will be available for free for transporters. It is currently a web app now, we might develop a phone app too," added Gaurav.
Finally, the students concluded that the aim of such an app is to help the industry reduce carbon emissions without any impact on their bottom line and without significant investment costs. "The app will be free of cost, easy to use, so that any layman can operate it, and will be greatly useful to the small logistics companies in the country, who do not have access to sophisticated software," said Kushal.
