The Accelerator which runs until June 3rd, comprises of more established businesses such as PowerMat, which can equip stations and trains with wireless charging, and earlier stage companies such as Pointr, which helps passengers navigate inside large and busy stations. Both companies already operate in the aviation and retail sectors and are participating on the accelerator programme to their innovative solutions to the traditionally less cutting edge rail sector.
The Accelerator also includes smaller start-ups such as iGeolise, which specialises in converting distances into travel times, and Vivacity Labs, which uses CCTV feeds and predictive models to help manage passengers in busy stations.
Co-founder of HackTrain, River Tamoor-Baig, commented: “Much like everyone who travels by train regularly, we want customer service and operational efficiency to improve. It is something that we are incredibly passionate about and why we are so driven and motivated to play our part in making the UK the world’s hub for RailTech. There are so many start-ups with amazing ways to make our railways more innovative, whether it be through indoor navigation, speeding up the reclaim process for delay repay or bridging communication gaps between train companies and passengers. We want to make sure their efforts and enthusiasm translate into real results by providing funding, industry contacts and a more shorter and efficient procurement cycle so that passengers can benefit from these new solutions faster”.
“We are continuing on the momentum we’ve created with last year’s HackTrain hackathon with the launch of the HackTrain Accelerator programme that nurtures early stage RailTech technology companies help them to develop, trial and introduce their products and services.”
Head of Osborne Clarke’s international Transport & Automotive sector, Simon Spooner commented:
“The HackTrain Accelerator is a unique opportunity for government, train operators and entrepreneurs to harness technology and innovation and improve how we do rail in the UK. At Osborne Clarke we increasingly find ourselves advising rail clients on the procurement, roll-out and impact of new technology in their businesses and the sector at large. We are therefore proud to be the legal partner to the HackTrain Accelerator and look forward to helping HackTrain deliver new solutions for the industry and benefits to rail passengers.”
HackTrain Accelerator teams taking part
Sirenum
Employee number: 13
Description of the product: Sirenum streamlines the management of part-time, temporary, mobile, and remote staff, even in highly regulated industries like transport. Sirenum saves management valuable time in scheduling shifts, monitoring staff, and processing key financial processes including payroll. With industry-leading compliance management embedded throughout the platform, Sirenum mitigates risk associated with fatigue and other health and safety violations.
iGeolise
Employee number: 10
Description of the product: iGeolise are the creators of the TravelTime platform, an API that makes location data searchable by travel time than distance.
Powermat
Employee number: 70
Description of the product: by equipping venues with a wireless charging infrastructure, Powermat’s platform allows businesses to increase relevant engagement with customers sending contextual information, alerts, offers and promotions through the Powermat app before, during and after on-site consumer interactions.
ParkJockey
Employee number: 17
Description of the product: ParkJockey’s virtual parking products take the pain out of parking for both the consumer and landlord. The potential customer will be able to have options where to park, along with the ability to redeem offers for their parking acts, and sign up for AutoPay – overall providing the consumer with a great customer experience.
Nimber
Employee number: 20
Description of the product: Nimber is a community delivery service. Ship something with someone already going that way, anyway. Nimber is the most personal convenient way to ship anything in the UK.
Pointr
Employee number: 23
Description of the product: Pointr is the leading indoor location data and analytics platform. Clients use Pointr’s technology to get data around who was within their venue, what they searched for, how they moved around and many more insights.
Vivacity Labs
Employee number: 5
Description of the product: Vivacity’s smart cameras quantify and classify pedestrians and vehicles in a wide range of environments. Their sensors have been used to monitor pedestrian flow, to count and classify traffic and to determine car parking space occupancy. They are developing a solution as part of HackTrain to sue their software with a station’s CCTV feed in order to provide real-time and predictive data on station busy-ness. Crucially, this all completely anonymous, with data processed on-site using privacy-protected algorithms. This same technology can also be used to count real-time train or platform occupancy; to look for indicators of potential suicides; and provide long-term data on flows to help station redesign or pricing of advertising/retail space.
Ticket
Employee number: 1-2
Description of product: Ticket provides a revolutionary interface and experience for rail customers enabling users to access a wide range of innovative features (delay, repay, real-time delays) simply by scanning their standard paper based rail ticket with their smartphone camera.
Dojo
Employee number: 30
Description of product: Dojo is a new age mobile publication that helps hundreds of thousands of young people find the most interesting and unique things to do in their city.
Dispatch Messenger Ltd
Employee number: 18
Description of product: Dispatch is an app that lets you shop by chat. Just make a request and we’ll find, buy, and deliver anything from London shops within an hour of your choice.
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