An exclusive interview with Ashwanii Rawat, Co-Founder & Director at Transerve Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

An exclusive interview with Ashwanii Rawat, Co-Founder & Director at Transerve Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Transerve is a location intelligence company that uses Geospatial Technology to enable Digital Transformation & effective decision making. which helps in deploying customized applications for asset tracking/ mapping, monitoring of projects, spatial data collection with geo-tagged pictures and videos and to share maps with key stakeholders or public. Transerve’s solution assists its users in solving complex business problems and allows organizations to deploy on premise in offline and classified environment. Founded by IIT Kanpur alumni, Amarsh Chaturvedi and Ashwanii Rawat, and headquartered at Panaji (Goa), Transerve aims to enable digital transformation. Transerve deploys its CityOSTM system to solve pressing urban issues like property tax, water, sanitation & solid waste management. From identification to the solving of complex problems related to urban setup, such as inventorying urban assets, revenue enhancement, land records modernization etc., Transerve facilitates increase in municipal revenue and improve civic service delivery by helping urban local bodies maintain an accurate database of properties. Their platform has the capacity to acquire and process information smoothly in a brownfield city that allows for analyzing and relating events, running simulations and anticipating possible problems along with managing special events or even emergency situations.

Transerve received seed funding from Centre for Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship (IIM-Ahmedabad) andCIBA.Further, in the year 2017, IL&FS Investments and Omidyar Networkinvested a total of $ 1.6 million in their pre-Series A funding round. Technology-based solutions developed on Transerve spatial platform have found implementation in cities across the country as Transerve continues to focus on creating industry-leading tech innovations that can maximize social impact and achieve sustainable development goals for the greater public good. The platform has been adopted by national agencies for large scale spatial data collection and analytics, and projects aided by national and international development multilaterals.

Ashwanii is one of the leading experts in satellite navigation technology in India, particularly in the field of precision mapping and its applications. He has a decade long experience in the field of location intelligence and solutions built thereon. During his stint at US-based Technology major Trimble Navigation, he helped in establishing the brand and GNSS precision technology in India and neighbouring countries. He built solutions that leveraged machine learning on satellite imagery and has co-authored research papers with reputed scientists in this area. He has studied Civil Engineering from IIT Kanpur.  Awarded at several prestigious international and national forums, Ashwanii is credited for establishing strong business development and customer relationships for the Transerve. Technologies for smart data collection, land records modernizations and UN Sustainable Development Goals are his core interests. He has spearheaded large scale data collection implementations at national and state levels using mobile computing technology. 

Under his guidance and vision, Transerve Technologies Pvt Ltd has expanded leaps and bounds and is currently working with customers of national and international repute. The company has also executed multiple projects for National and International multi-lateral agencies and plans to double its net worth in the next 5 years while expanding its network across India and abroad. 

(Pic - Mr. Ashwanii Rawat, Co-Founder & Director, Transerve)

An exclusive interview with Ashwanii Rawat, Co-Founder & Director at Transerve Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

When were you founded?

Transerve technologies was founded in the year 2009 by IIT Kanpur alumni, Amarsh Chaturvedi and Ashwani Rawat.

How many employees do you have?

Over 50 specialists and skilled individuals now make up the Transerve workforce, which is distributed across India.

How do you get the idea to start this venture?

Me and Mr. Amarsh Chaturvedi were at IIT-Kanpur when a successful stint as interns at Defence Research and Development Organization helped us see the potential that geospatial mapping had to offer. Then we decided to use digital mapping technology to aid clients to make informed decisions through the use of location-based data analytics or Geomatics.

Briefly explain the business.

Transerve Technologies is the fastest-growing Location Intelligence company that uses Geospatial Technology to enable Digital Transformation & effective decision-making. Having been acknowledged as a top emerging and innovative company by NASSCOM and Deloitte (Top Fast 50 Tech company) and promoted by Omidyar Network and Tara India Fund, the Goa-based company is also a part of Nasscom's Deep Tech Club. It has also been awarded by the Department of Science & Technology (Government of India). Transerve works with businesses and governments to solve complex problems related to urban setup like inventorying the cities and its assets, revenue enhancement, census using mobile computing, and land records modernization. Their solutions are being implemented in a variety of industries like government, infrastructure, environment, Insurance, estate management, smart cities, agriculture and telecom.

The company is evolving very fast keeping pace with the advancement in technology and connectivity towards a universal platform for humans to assist in making the most efficient decision through edge computing and using artificial intelligence. The vision of the company is to organize the world’s information and tag it with location and provide an intuitive tool for day-to-day operations.

Which Industries Transerve is catering to?

Transerve is providing its solutions and data to industries like BFSI, FMCG, Retail, Healthcare, Infrastructure, Real estate, Environment, Policy Research, Market Research, and Education.

Is the company funded?

Transerve was started as a bootstrapped venture but later in 2017, the company raised USD 1.6 million from IL&FS Investment Managers and Omidyar Network in a Series A round of funding. The investment was facilitated by Tribe Impact (previously known as Intellecap Impact Investment Network or I3N), an impact-focused angel network facilitating investments into early-stage enterprises.

Transerve was seed-funded by CIIE-IIM Ahmedabad and CIBA, Goa in its nascent stage; currently, it has Omidyar Network and Tara India Fund as its marquee social impact early-stage investors.

What is the estimated growth of Transerve and related details?

Transerve platform saw exponential growth in a number of subscribers in 2022 as they launched the SaaS version of the technology Q1 2022. The growth will be fueled by the company’s partnerships with established and trusted data providers to cater to customers in other geographies..

What is the background of Founders?

Ashwani is one of the leading experts in satellite navigation technology in India, particularly in the field of precision mapping and its applications. He has a decade-long experience in the field of location intelligence and solutions built thereon. He has studied Civil Engineering from IIT Kanpur. Awarded at several prestigious international and national forums, Ashwani is credited for establishing strong business development and customer relationships for the Transerve. Technologies for smart data collection, land records modernizations and UN Sustainable Development Goals are his core interests. He has spearheaded large scale data collection implementations at national and state levels using mobile computing technology.

Amarsh Chaturvedi is the Co-founder & Director at Transerve. Additionally, Amarsh Chaturvedi has had 1 past job as the Business Analyst at Jones Lang LaSalle.

Who are some of your clients?

Smart cities and utility businesses were among the early adopters. Transerve has also expanded its capabilities to help decision-makers in BFSI, real estate, FMCG, and other industries. Transerve works with businesses and governments to solve complex problems related to urban setup like inventorying the cities and its assets, revenue enhancement, census using mobile computing, and land records modernization. A variety of industries use Transerve to tackle a multitude of decision-making challenges.  Transerve solutions are being implemented in a variety of industries like government, Banking, NBFC, infrastructure, environment, Insurance, estate management, smart cities, agriculture and telecom. Some of Transerve’s key clients include state governments, PSUs like SAIL, Institute of National Importance like NDDB and NIUA, philanthropic organizations like Tata Trust, corporates like PwC, L&T, Country Garden, Deloitte, etc.

Who are your main competitors?

Transerve ranks 7th among 351 active competitors which include MapmyIndia, Canvas, GoFormz, GoSpotCheck.

How is Transerve different from the competition?

Transerve has developed the Transerve Online Stack (TOS) spatial web platform on open stack from scratch for users who do not have any formal training in GIS technology with the aim that anyone can use spatial analytics without much training and analyse data for their businesses. The platform will be available for both SaaS subscription and for on-premise installation.

Our team has implemented machine learning on data categorization on the TOS platform in order to help users to analyse media files captured from the field using mobile devices. Machine learning will help users in analyzing large volumes of data within hours which on a platform available in the market will take a lot of time since media files are being collected on this platform for ground-truthing purposes only.

What are your immediate and long term milestones like?

We have been conferred with Microsoft Excellence Award in 2014. Since then we have been seeing an upward journey every day. We have recently been acknowledged as a top emerging and innovative company by NASSCOM and Deloitte. Our spatial platform Transerve Online Stack is now being leveraged for large-scale social impact by various government departments.

Transerve is aggressive in taking web-based spatial technology to various industries like health, education, logistics, manufacturing, smart cities, etc. Today most of the data produced in the world have location as an attribute which means that Transerve product will find its utility in managing and analyzing the spatial attribute of such data.

How do you think is the Geospatial sector is going to upsurge in the near future?

COVID19 crisis has posed a threat to the economy and has proved that without spatial intelligence it is difficult to contain any widespread crisis. Spatial technology helps in planning for the future and monitoring the trends over geography. Spatial technology has found utility in almost every sphere and has become a common part of the economic ecosystem. The digitalization process is the key to the inclusion of spatial technology in various sectors like e-governance in urban space, smart cities, local governments, etc. Transerve has demonstrated huge success in areas like Fecal Sludge Management, Utilities, Forestry, and Municipal GIS in a big way in India. As per a study conducted by Geospatial Media and Communications, GIS adoption is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 13%. Data creation and updation on a real-time basis along with spatial information have gathered great demand with automated spatial analysis, especially for the urban sector in India as the need for digitalization is increasing to provide better citizen service. Change detection for monitoring the changes will be a factor to quickly estimate the impact of policy on the ground for example monitoring of afforestation or estimating the economic growth using night satellite imagery etc.

Website - https://transerve.com/