The companies all follow a similar theme

The Singaporean taxi company ComfortDelGro has announced the first three investments of its new venture fund. It included a public and private transportation management systems and an autonomous vehicle safety solution.

The investments were made from the company’s US$100 million venture fund set up in November.

The three companies all operate under the theory that the future of transportation is going to be centralised. They work to find-and-fix inefficiencies (or improve safety). Assuming a central transportation network, the three startups are making a play to be leaders in their given lane.

Let’s take a look at the companies.

SWAT

SWAT is essentially a fleet management service for city planning. The company uses algorithms to try and optimise transportation routes and theoretically save everybody some money.

The technology takes into consideration constraints, estimated-time-of-arrival updates and other data to rank the ideal routes for the vehicle.

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The company has launched an on-demand bus system in Sydney, Australia. The launch was facilitated via ComfortDelGro’s Australian subsidiary, which makes sense given the investment.

Haulio

Haulio is Singapore’s startup answer to the hauling industry (think large 16-wheelers). In Singapore, it is impossible to call them long-haul logistics providers, but that is the industry they are attacking.

The logic behind Haulio is that by pooling jobs the industry can find the most efficient way to transport goods across the city-state.

ComfortDelGro invested in the company because it saw synergies between the technology that matches long-haul vehicles and how it could be implemented into the taxi industry.

Fortellix

The third company is out of Israel and it wants to improve the vehicle testing standards of the autonomous industry.

Fortellix wants to help take autonomous vehicle testing to the standards that will be necessary in the future. The startup assumes that today’s standards are fine, but will soon be insufficient when driverless cars become the core form of transportation. Fortellix wants to help take that industry to where it will inevitably find itself.

“Even as we continue to look at ways to grow our existing businesses, we are pursuing strategic investments in new and emerging technology start-ups which bridge the gap between what is, and what could be,” said Yang Ban Seng, the managing director and CEO of ComfortDelGro.

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