Qualcomm Ventures funds Birds Eye Systems, a real time traffic alert startup

Bird Eye Systems, a real-time traffic alert and travel information tech startup, Bird Eye Systems has raised a fresh round of funding from Qualcomm Ventures, after raising their first round from Matrix Partners India. Bird Eye was earlier funded by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) and the Indian Angel Network.

Qualcomm had earlier invested in a similar business in Israel. The company, Waze, was  acquired by Google for almost a billion dollars about a year back.

The team will use the fresh money to hire a team, invest in product development, marketing and user acquisition. They are also planning to expand their user-base to more cities. Over the span of three years, the team has operates in six cities with a 60+ strong team.

The congested traffic jams in Mumbai, where Bird Eye is based, propelled the idea to have some alert and support navigation system to help commuters with information on real time traffic. Their app, Traffline is a compelling mobile transport application that enables city navigation with real time information on traffic, routes and parking.

When it comes to helping commuters avoid traffic snarls, Traffline is one up on Google

Sharing the motivation for starting up, Brijraj Vaghani, Founder tells,

Getting access to accurate and real-time traffic, travel and local information is a big problem for millions of Indian commuters in major cities. We want to address this problem using an approach tailored to Indian ethos and travel conditions.

Waze's team is still based in Israel, working on improving features for Google maps. Explaining the reasons behind the investment in Traffline, Varsha Tagare, Director, Qualcomm Ventures shares,

As a leader in wireless technologies, Qualcomm is pleased to invest in Traffline that is applying wireless and location technologies, Traffline provides innovative solutions to address current challenges in the transportation segment.

Vikram Vaidyanathan, Director, Matrix Partners India adds,

Birds Eye’s aims to serve commuters daily with real-time, contextual and socially relevant information. By aggregating information from the police and public utilities they've created a unique India specific data set. We're excited to be part of this journey with Brij and Ravi and welcome Qualcomm.

Through a set of mobile apps starting with - Traffline and Ridlr - commuters can also connect and share info with each other creating a large hyper local social network for the daily commute. This would just give open a new channel of opportunities for various other market players to build on top of their datasets.

The team has just beta launched its unique public transportation mobile app, Ridlr on the Google Play Store. With this app, they are attempting to make public transport stress-free and enjoyable for the users with detailed, to-the-minute information about all public transport schedules and travel times.

Based on their datasets, the team believes to incorporate the ‘Parking’ feature soon that would give the user access to all the parking information in big cities.

Traffline’s aim to own the everyday, door-to door travel and informational space on mobile from private vehicles, public transport and local businesses across all major cities in India.

The team is building a social community bringing together Traffline app users, users on twitter interested in traffic updates, City Traffic Police divisions for bring relevant traffic related news, alerts and updates together.