Divya Prashanth sees blockchain as catalyst in transformation of public transportation

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Just about every industry out there will benefit from blockchain technology in one way or another, whether it be through payments, data management, tokenization and automation, the list goes on.

The transportation industry is already seeing significant change in its operations, thanks to blockchain technology. Divya Prashanth, CEO of JurnyOn, a subscription-based mobile ticketing service powered by blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), believes her innovation will save governments and train operators millions in lost revenue.

Prashanth was a speaker at the May 22nd Women in Blockchain panel event, an initiative of the London Blockchain Conference 2024 and Women in Blockchain Talks to bring together like-minded women during the LBC.

After Prashanth’s panel, during which she was joined by Christine Leong of nChain and Lauren Ingram of Women of Web3 and moderated by Women in Blockchain Talks’ Lavinia Osbourne, CoinGeek Backstage had an opportunity to hear more about JurnyOn and how it is changing public transportation.

“We’ve been building anti-fraud train tickets on the blockchain and it eliminates fraud. About 240 million is lost every year due to train and rail card fraud, and that’s costing the government and the train operator millions,” Prashanth shared with CoinGeek Backstage.

“So with this technology, we are able to give back that clawback, that lost revenue, and it can be used by government for public service and train operators for various other services that they might want to start,” she added.

Prashanth and her team were the proud recipients of an Innovate UK Grant, allowing them to partner with Transport for Wales.

“That’s an amazing collaboration between a startup and a giant of an organization and a government body at that, so it’s a really exciting space to be,” she said.

According to Prashanth, the initial pilot was an “unbelievable success,” and they plan to roll out their solution in the next few months.

“The exciting aspect of it is that we have completely abstracted the Web3 layer, because if you’re going to try and explain the pneumonic self-custody and all of those jargons to every day ordinary people, you’re not going to get anywhere with it. So we just treat it as an application,” she explained.

“And at the end of it, there’s some amazing tech that is a trustless system that is your hashing, your immutable records, and you have cryptography, but nobody else has to know about it,” Prashanth added.

JurnyOn is proud to have two female founders, and Prashanth was happy to provide advice for other female founders seeking investment from venture capitalists (VCs).

“When you’re having these conversations with the VC, try and prompt them to ask promoted questions like what would you do with the money, rather than getting them to ask questions like the risk that the business could have,” she advised.

“There’s a Harvard business paper that says that most women are not asked promoted questions. So try to push that,” she added.

When asked what aspect of blockchain tech she finds the most exciting and promising, Prashanth’s response was unsurprisingly public transport.

“I think that’s a huge place for disruption,” she said.

“You have 240 million just lost in revenue because of fraud and a trustless system, which is where you can use cryptography to validate your tickets… you’re just making this little incremental change and you’re changing the way transport works forever,” she continued. “For me personally, that’s the place where there’s a lot of excitement.”

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