Mumbai – HERE Technologiesin collaboration with Zoomcar, the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) car sharing marketplace covering emerging markets, has come out with a city-based map of India that depicts the percentage of good, average and bad drivers in 22 cities across the country.
The top three Indian cities with the highest number of good drivers are Indore (35.4%), Lucknow (33.2%), and Hyderabad (33.1%). When it comes to bad drivers, the top cities are Mysore (18.5%), Ahmedabad (14.8%), followed by Bangalore (14%). The map was created based on data from Zoomcar’s proprietary driver scoring system, between November 2020 and November 2021.
Road safety is a critical concern today and driver behavior has never been more important. A report by the World Bank suggested that road crash deaths in India are among the highest in the world, with 53 road crashes every hour, killing one person every four minutes.
To increase road user and driver safety, as well as monitor the conditions of its vehicle fleet across India, Zoomcar utilizes close to 200 million data points – vehicle speed, engine speed, acceleration, brake, battery and tire life, and more – daily from its vehicles to develop a scoring system that measures the driving performance of its drivers. External factors not within the control of the driver – bad weather and traffic – are also considered. With that, the smoother one drives, the higher the driver’s score will be. Drivers who score more than 65 are considered good drivers, while those who score under 50 are considered bad drivers.
Greg Moran, Co-founder and CEO of Zoomcar said, “The data generated from our vehicles provides us insights into understanding driving patterns. From the data, we created the driving scoring system to measure driving behavior and incentivize our drivers to drive better. This is a win-win situation for us and our customers because we could keep the vehicle owner’s service and maintenance cost down, while our customers continue to enjoy driving vehicles in good conditions.”
To further leverage data from its vehicle fleet, Zoomcar is providing HERE access to its collective data related to driving behavior – such as latitude and longitude values, speeding, braking, acceleration, place or origin and destination, and time of trips – via the HERE platform, where the data can be utilized by the extensive HERE ecosystem of partners and customers to better understand traffic trends and city and transportation planning. By tapping into the HERE ecosystem, Zoomcar will also expand the opportunities for its self-drive car rental business to reach additional emerging markets, strengthening its market leadership in global car sharing.
Since Dec 2021, Zoomcar has been piloting a new vehicle host program that enables individual vehicle owners to list their cars on Zoomcar for others to rent and earn a revenue share on each booking rental. Through this program, Zoomcar has expanded its vehicle supply on its platform by three-fold from December 2021 to April 2022. As a result, Zoomcar expects higher transaction volume among its users, which in turn contributes to more data – from both hosts and drivers – on the HERE platform.
Zoomcar also benefits from location data by HERE for Zoomcar Mobility Services (ZMS), the company’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that provides businesses with a full-stack of mobility software solutions across vehicle segments. Data from this collaboration with HERE will be useful in reducing operating costs, enhancing driver’s safety, increasing vehicle monetization, and improving customer engagement.
“By combining our data with the HERE platform’s location intelligence capabilities, we are able produce key insights on driver’s behavior that will be critical for businesses such as insurance companies, fleet operators, and vehicle owners who are listing their cars on our platform,” added Moran. “We’re delighted to join hands with a leading location data and platform provider like HERE Technologies. I’m confident that Zoomcar will continue to grow and thrive with the help of HERE and its robust ecosystem of partners.”
Abhijit Sengupta, Senior Director and Head of Business for India and Southeast Asia said, “Ensuring the safety of all road users has quickly risen to the top priority for mobility service providers. We are excited to support Zoomcar with location intelligence that will improve their overall business efficiency and help make Indian roads safer to reshape the mobility ecosystem in the country.”
Vivek Beriwal, Principal Analyst for Automotive at S&P Global Mobility added, “Given India’s dismal road safety record, driver behavior monitoring has become more relevant than ever and car sharing companies like Zoomcar are a good fit to launch more such initiatives which are a win-win for all the parties involved. Location intelligence by HERE not only help launch these initiatives and help urban mobility players fulfil a pressing social need, but also help them monetize location-centric assets.”
