Urban Engines

Founded in 2012 by Shiva Shivakumar, Balaji Prabhakar, and Deepak Merugu, Urban Engines was a location analytics firm that operated from Los Altos, California. The company was established to analyze and visualize data on the movement of people and things within cities, a concept the founders termed the "Internet of Moving Things". The inspiration came from co-founder Balaji Prabhakar, a Stanford professor, who saw parallels between internet traffic congestion and urban traffic jams. He partnered with Shiva Shivakumar, a former Google VP of Engineering who helped build products like AdSense and Cloud Apps, and had a mutual interest in applying digital world solutions to real-world problems.

Urban Engines developed a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, the "Space/Time Engine," which processed large datasets from sources like commuter transit cards and vehicle GPS to model urban mobility. This enabled clients, primarily city transit agencies, delivery companies, and taxi services, to understand traffic patterns, identify congestion, and visualize the flow of people and goods in real-time. For example, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority used the platform to analyze rider data to understand travel patterns and crowding, while Indian logistics company Delhivery used it to track packages and identify delays in its network. The firm's business model focused on providing these analytics tools to help organizations optimize their operations without the need for expensive physical sensors. The company also explored behavioral economics, creating systems to offer commuters incentives for traveling during off-peak hours.

The company secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding in May 2014 from a notable group of investors, including Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Eric Schmidt, and Greylock Partners. After approximately four years of operation, during which it worked with cities like São Paulo and Singapore, Urban Engines was acquired by Google in September 2016 for an undisclosed sum. The team was integrated into Google Maps to enhance its location analytics capabilities.

Keywords: Urban Engines, location analytics, urban mobility, traffic congestion analysis, transportation data, smart cities, Shiva Shivakumar, Balaji Prabhakar, Space/Time Engine, transit data visualization, behavioral economics, logistics optimization, commuter patterns, Internet of Moving Things, Google acquisition, real-time traffic, public transportation analytics, data-driven planning, spatial analytics, fleet management solutions, delivery tracking