In an interesting development, Orbit Wallet (Sakaera Technologies) won part of a $100,000 (₹86 lakh) as part of the Station Access and Mobility Programme (STAMP) Challenge : Nudging Commuter Behaviour organised by the Toyota Mobility Foundation, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), WRI Foundation, and Electronics City Industrial Association (ELCIA).
As per a LinkedIn post by Orbit’s CEO Harshvardhan Zaveri, the pilot programme is to start in August 2025 with tie-ups with companies in Electronics City to issue Orbit Wallet’s Prepaid Card to promote patronage of the National Common Mobility Card (NCMC). The other three winners of the STAMP Challenge, according to a Deccan Herald article are CommuteVerse, Nippon Koei Business Ventures and Tummoc (Transhelp Technologies). Under STAMP 2025, the winners will use demonstrate the integration of behavioural patterns with public transport.
While the timing and location of Orbit’s announcement coincides with the opening of Namma Metro’s Yellow Line that will connect Electronics City with the rest of Bengaluru, we hope that it will also translate towards the BMTC accepting the NCMC as a payment method. BMTC had in May 2025 announced that it was looking at upgrading its ticketing systems to accept the NCMC. A year prior to that, it was reported by Christin Mathew Philip of MoneyControl that BMTC with a daily ridership of 38 lakh was not keen on accepting the Namma Metro NCMC because BMRCL had a ridership of 7-8 lakh, an argument that defies logic and defeats the purpose of the NCMC itself.
Let’s hope that BMTC will take the smart step and roll-out the red carpet for the NCMC soon.
Notes: Nippon Koei is a Japanese consultancy firm that works in the transport sector. It has worked with the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) in the past.
Tummoc is the platform that allows commuters to track BMTC buses and also purchase daily passes. In Delhi, commuters can buy bus tickets as well with Tummoc.
I couldn’t find much about CommuteVerse but this LinkedIn post by Dr Aekta Aggarwal, Associate Professor at IIM Indore sheds some light on it. She describes it as a behaviourly intelligent commuting platform. I will post more once I learn more about it.
Featured Image: Winners of the STAMP Mobility Challenge (Picture via Toyota Mobility Foundation)
