In order to help people, we decided to tackle a serious problem in Old Delhi-traffic congestion. We found that a key contributor to traffic in Delhi were cows on roads, slowing down and even blocking traffic. Cows are revered in India and allowed to roam free. We turned these roadblocks into traffic guides. We created an app that tracked the cows’ movements and location allowing commuters to see exactly where they were to avoid them. They could even follow the unique gullies and lanes used by cows to navigate the city. We did this by equipping the cows with special transmitter collars. Each collar housed a recycled smartphone with a solar charger. The GPS capabilities of the phones allowed us to easily track the cows.

To help commuters, we created special transmitter collars for Gaaye’s (Hindi for cow, pronounced guy). Each collar had a recycled smart phone and a solar charger. Using existing GPS capabilities of the phone we were able to track cows, follow their movements and provide updates on nearby traffic to people. One application, for the collars, was created to track longitude, latitude and collect data to track the cows, and the Traffic Gaaye app was created with google maps’ open API allowing commuters to avoid a very common source of congestion, the cows themselves. Users could see where the cows were, receive tweets with traffic updates and even follow unique routes the cows used to navigate the city.

The Traffic Gaaye initiative is ongoing, as it is a viable traffic solution for other Indian cities. It was implemented on April 7th, 2016 and was launched on the google play store.

A key result was changing the way people navigated the city. Because of the Traffic Gaaye app, users found easier ways to navigate the city, through the same streets and gullies the cows used. The initial phase has had over 1300 downloads of the app. With 6,000 km covered by the cows, we had a data bank of hundreds of unique routes created. These combined with the traffic updates and alerts showed that commuters journeys were reduced by an average of 15 minutes. There was a 13% increase in the Videocon brand affinity amongst its user base.

Through daily usage, the app indirectly affected the larger population and other commuters in Old Delhi. As a result, congestion was reduced, causing a decrease in fuel consumption and air pollution in Old Delhi. The app is coming soon to Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru.