Data Is Probably the Biggest Gap: Arrive CEO on the Future of Intelligent Mobility

Arrive, a global mobility platform, has chosen Bengaluru as a key centre for its global technology and product development, with its new innovation hub expected to focus on disruption, innovation, AI and data-led mobility solutions.

The global mobility platform has opened its new Bengaluru centre with engineering, product, customer care, sales operations and AI teams working together. The company expects the India team to support products and services across its global markets rather than operate as a conventional technology delivery centre.

Cameron Clayton, CEO, Arrive, said India was the first filter when the company began evaluating locations for its next phase of growth.

Talent was the second consideration, but Clayton said the company was looking beyond technical capabilities while building the team.

“We are looking for missionaries, not mercenaries. And I think we found that here in Bangalore and in India overall. But in Bangalore in particular, there’s a lot of missionaries that want to make a difference in helping make cities more livable, which is our purpose and the reason we sort of exist in the world,” he said.

The third factor was the opportunity to challenge Arrive’s existing approach. “We sort of want to disrupt ourselves. So we have been growing and doing well, but we are looking for our team here to disrupt ourselves,” Clayton said. The company felt Bengaluru offered the kind of talent required for that effort.

There was also a more personal factor in the choice. “Extra credit to our CTO, Sandesh who is from Mangalore, just an hour flight away from here. So he pushed Jerome (COO) and I into saying that Bangalore was his first choice,” Clayton said.

Arrive COO Jérôme Selva said Bengaluru’s strength in data and AI further supported the decision. “Today in India, we consider Bangalore as the Silicon Valley of the East. And for data and AI, I don’t think you will find another city in India that beats the talent for that capacity,” he said.

The focus will extend beyond supporting existing products. “The first is to disrupt ourselves, which I just sort of talked about, to make our current products better,” Clayton said.

One of the more specific projects involves autonomous vehicles in the US. Arrive is looking to build the mobility and payments platform that can support autonomous vehicles, with its team in Bengaluru expected to contribute to that work.

“In the United States right now, autonomous vehicles are actually on the streets driving around in four cities, so in San Francisco and Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. And we want our team here to help us build the mobility platform, the payments platform for autonomous vehicles,” Clayton said.

That work will require what he described as an AI-led and data-led approach, with the broader objective being to use the Bengaluru team to innovate and challenge existing products.

AI is already being used by Arrive in ways that may not be immediately visible to consumers. Clayton pointed to the example of a major event taking place in a city. Planning for such an event requires decisions around traffic, public transport, parking, revenue and the movement of people.

“There’s all sorts of questions that balloon out at one event,” he said. Arrive’s role, he explained, is to use data and AI to help cities make recommendations on how to manage such situations, from increasing available parking inventory to changing traffic light sequences.

“AI is sort of the recommendation engine that recommends the city officials what they should do,” Clayton said. The same approach can be applied to drivers, cyclists and fleet managers.

“So we are really a recommendation engine for anyone moving in a city to help make better decisions about their movement,” he said.

Clayton believes the biggest gap between current mobility systems and more intelligent systems is data. The sources of mobility data are expanding from mobile phones to cameras, vehicles, buses and AI agents, with robots expected to become another source in the future.

“We see that as sort of probably the single biggest gap is the data gap itself,” he said.

He pointed to Bengaluru itself as an example. Despite arriving in the city at around 1 am, Clayton said he encountered significant traffic.

“It was bustling. It was great. I loved it. But the data about what’s happening on every single street in Bangalore is the missing ingredient,” he said.

Arrive intends to build its capabilities around collecting, organising and structuring such data, with the longer-term objective of bringing its products and services to Bengaluru’s citizens.

On the technologies likely to have the greatest impact on mobility, Clayton sees different timelines. “Digital payments is probably the thing that’s going to have the biggest impact in the next two to three years,” he said.

Over a five-to-10-year period, however, he expects autonomous vehicles to have a bigger impact. He sees autonomous buses as one example, where removing the driver could make public transport more predictable and reliable.

“The robot essentially will drive the bus. But the bus will always be on time and it will always be safe and it will always show up. And so you can count on the bus,” he said.

Clayton also made it clear that Arrive does not view Bengaluru through the traditional GCC model of technology delivery. Instead, the company has two objectives for the centre: disruption and innovation.

“We want it to be a disruption engine. So we want to disrupt our current products and services. The other is we want to innovate,” he said.

The Bengaluru team will work with a global remit, supporting Arrive’s products and markets across more than 90 countries. A specific near-term project will involve bringing Arrive’s private off-street garage data in the US into autonomous vehicle platforms. Clayton said autonomous vehicle companies currently have extensive access to public-road information but limited access to data about private locations such as hotel garages.

The Bengaluru team is expected to work on bringing this private garage data into autonomous vehicle systems in the coming months.

Looking ahead, Clayton identified South America, India and Africa as three major geographies that Arrive is focused on expanding across. The Bengaluru team will support the company’s work across these markets as well as its wider global operations.

For Clayton, the future of mobility will not be driven by technology alone. “It’s not only AI, it’s humans and AI that make the best recommendation,” he said.