Asia Mobiliti and UK partners awarded Newton Ungku Omar Fund

• To improve multimodal passenger information for Malaysian public transport 
• Advancements in digitizing passenger information in public transport services

Malaysia’s Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) technology startup, Asia Mobiliti has been awarded the Newton Ungku Omar Fund Grand Challenge 2019 in collaboration with UK partners, the University of Birmingham and Zipabout.

The partnership will see the Malaysian-UK consortium collaborating on the CONTINUUM (Connected Transport and Integrated User-centric Urban Mobility) project, which in phase 1 aims to conduct a technical strategy study to integrate real-time data from various transport services into a platform in order to improve passenger connectivity to public transport services in Malaysia.

The consortium brings together innovative solutions from both countries with transport-focused IoT devices, data integration platforms for real-time passenger information, as well as network optimisation tools for addressing demand more efficiently. Focusing initially in the city of Kuala Lumpur for its greater pool of services, the consortium will map demand from behavioural analytics to elaborate an operational concept for a multi-modal passenger information platform.

The Newton Ungku Omar Fund is a joint effort between the Malaysian and British governments to promote science, technology and innovation collaboration between them. The fund is delivered in the UK by Innovate UK, Britain’s innovation agency, and in Malaysia by the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology (MIGHT), Malaysia’s technology think-tank under the purview of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

Prof Clive Roberts of the University of Birmingham explains, “We are very excited with this new collaboration between the University of Birmingham, Zipabout, and Asia Mobiliti to undertake a timely project in Malaysia. The combination of our expertise will produce highly needed advancements in digitalizing passenger information in public transport services. This is a much needed tool around the world where systems need to cater for the more dynamic nature of mobility in large cities such as Kuala Lumpur. This opportunity is also particularly compelling for us to explore the specific contexts around overall transport demand and network capabilities in one of the largest cities in Asia.”

Commenting on the Malaysian side, Ramachandran Muniandy (pic), Asia Mobiliti’s cofounder and CTO said: “Asia Mobiliti sees this as a key milestone which enables us to integrate and deploy our technologies in collaboration with our UK partners to prepare a digital passenger information platform for multimodal public transportation in Malaysia.”

He noted that the timing has never been better for Malaysia to digitalize the experience of public transit. “We have forged a strong working relationship with the University of Birmingham, which houses the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education, the largest university-based centre for railway research and education in Europe and Zipabout, our UK startup contemporary that has developed a personalised journey information platform for passengers,” says Ramachandran.

“We see the pieces coming together to solve the complex problem of public transit connectivity in Malaysia,” he says.