We always focus on making ideas as economically viable as possible, says Prasanna Ganesh, Program Director, Toyota Mobility Foundation to The Pioneer’s Vikas Kumar.
Here are excerpts of his conversation
What is the object of stamp? What is the role of Toyota Mobility Foundation in that?
It is an independent foundation aimed at coming up with mobility solutions for all. We focus on two areas demand and supply and issues related to personal mobility. We deal with congestion problems, safety problems or pollution problems. We deal with issues related to personal mobility like people who don’t have access to mobility — old people, handicapped peopleand people with disabilities. We provide Mobility solutions for these people.
TMF works with social cause related to all kinds of mobility. Now in India we are trying to find ways to serve the issue of congestion.
You are providing last mile connectivity solutions. What about the affordability of such services? Can a common man afford them?
We always focus on making these ideas as economically viable as possible. If one chooses to take a scooter its 1/3 the price of an auto. But I will definitely say that the scooter rental services are not for everyone. It’s a good solution when one is going alone to a workplace but when traveling with wife and children to school or when it rains it’s not a considerable solution.
Please throw some light on how stamp is adopting evidence based approach.
We at TMF start with facts not solutions. The biggest problem which we see with many entrepreneurs is that they have an idea and they think to bring that idea and put it anywhere as fast as possible. One station is residential, other could be around schools we need to get facts, demography of the group, how many people are getting on, how much they are willing to pay. What is most imp for you? You come up with a solution. But a bike is not a solution for everything. One needs to understand the station, right pricing, TMF gives guidance to make that business a sustainable one.
What kind of entries have you received?
In Bangalore and Hyderabad we focused on multi model mobility. We received lot of solutions mostly hardware solutions. In terms of smart hardware, electric scooter or rickshaw which one can book on app,before leaving the house you can book on destination. Other ideas were carpooling, parking, how to get work commute vehicles, we also got ideas based on fair integration. Ideas related to seamless payments, creating a payment card from bus agency to metro agency etc.