Programming a More Efficient Way to Travel
October 4, 2024
When Tom Vazhekatt BS’24 first considered developing a web application, he imagined it would be a simple platform that maybe a few dozen people at most would use. But two years and 50,000 users later, Vazhekatt’s Routora app has spread globally and become a must-have travel tool for businesses and anyone wanting to travel more efficiently.
Routora is a route optimization app that allows users to enter multiple destinations that the app then prioritizes to create the most efficient trip. Vazhekatt created the app while he was a student at The University of Texas at Dallas, and the computer science graduate’s entrepreneurial vision has become a reality.
“The idea for Routora has always been in the back of my mind,” Vazhekatt said. “I thought it would be cool if someone would invent something like this that I could use.”
During high school, Vazhekatt’s parents often sent their son to run errands in and around his hometown of Coppell, Texas. He always tried to find the quickest and most efficient way to reach several stops.
“I’d go to different stores like Costco, Walmart and Kroger, and I would see that I just passed Costco on my way to another store,” he said. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I had a way to organize all my stops and not have to backtrack?’”
A graduate of Coppell High School, Vazhekatt was passionate about a career in environmental science and was accepted at the University of California, Berkeley. But the COVID-19 pandemic diverted his direction. Vazhekatt took several online computer coding classes from home to fill spare time during the lockdown. He discovered he loved coding so much that he decided to change his college major to computer science and applied to UT Dallas, which has a national reputation for computer science.
As a student in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, Vazhekatt enrolled in UTDesign EPICS, a program in which undergraduate student teams complete engineering and computer programming projects to help nonprofits. Vazhekatt and his teammates created a logistics program to help Trusted World manage its delivery trucks.
With relevant logistics experience under his belt, Vazhekatt then continued to think about an application that would help small businesses and gig drivers solve an important puzzle – delivering products and services more efficiently.
“At this point, everyone is using Google Maps, and I thought there must be a way to use the program to create an application to reorder multiple stops,” Vazhekatt said.
That’s when he had an “aha” moment while learning about a Chrome extension that works seamlessly with Google Maps. Quick research showed that no one else was using the extension with Google Maps, and in a matter of minutes, he built the extension and uploaded it. Routora, the business startup, was born in 2022.
Quickly, the extension was downloaded by thousands of people. Clearly, the Google Maps extension was viewed by users as an invaluable business tool – especially for people driving for a living. Vazhekatt began collecting feedback from web users and the top response was that customers wanted a mobile version.
Vazhekatt recruited a couple of fellow UTD computer science students to help him begin building the mobile version of Routora. In 2023, the students entered the concept in the University’s Big Idea Competition, a contest for student and alumni entrepreneurs to pitch innovative startups and ideas. Vazhekatt and his team won first place in the student division, winning $25,000.
Later that year, Vazhekatt launched the finished mobile version of Routora, and the offering went viral.
“The launch was amazing, and in the first week the app was available it had 10,000 downloads,” Vazhekatt said. “It topped the charts for navigation apps, and we were mentioned on Yahoo Finance and Bloomberg and did all kinds of interviews.”
Today, 50,000 people in 90 countries use Routora on all its available platforms. In addition to the application’s widespread acceptance by users, Vazhekatt is equally excited that his program is having a positive impact on the environment.
“By using the app to create more efficient routes, businesses are driving less and emitting less carbon into the atmosphere,” Vazhekatt said. “Recently, we hit more than 1,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions saved, which is equivalent to 2.5 million miles.”
The word is out about Routora, with companies and government agencies across a variety of industries using the app – from trucking firms to waste disposal companies to schools managing bus routes. An equally wide group of individuals use the app, including real estate agents, home services providers, delivery drivers and health care providers.
On a recent trip to New York City, Vazhekatt and his team met with a company that wants to provide route optimization to the city’s thousands of municipal inspectors. Routora is being considered for the job. While in New York, the team arranged to have Routora promoted on a huge digital billboard in Times Square.
“That did well on social media,” he said. “I think we got more than 130,000 impressions on LinkedIn alone.”
Vazhekatt, who is now developing new products under the Routora brand, said he is happy with the impact his startup is having and with the fact the company has been profitable from day one. But he is most proud that Routora is helping people.
“For me, my whole goal in life is to pursue things that genuinely help people,” he said. “We heard from a field service technician who told us using the app got him home an hour earlier each day, and now he’s able to pick his kids up from school. The time people save is the most important thing.”