Fast-tracking Fast Mobility: Putting IHMCL on a growth path

The IHMCL we know today has come a long way: From 2012 to 2024, from simple road toll transactions and road safety infrastructure measures to GNSS based tolling. The organisation is transforming itself as a change agent, facilitating highway traffic management and seamless mobility. Amit Ranjan Chitranshi, who took over as the COO of IHMCL early last year, is in a hurry to bring about rapid progress across all the verticals.

As an ardent learner, I always have curiosity to learn new things, explore new avenues. Conducting stakeholder consultations often brings innovative ideas to our problems

Taking over as COO from just last year, what have been your priorities? You have come with quality experience in Infrastructure sector and highway projects

My prime priority is to build better customer satisfaction by improving ETC infra at toll plazas and making the system integrators more accountable in toll plaza operations as they are the ones running the whole NETC show. Equally important is making the ETC banking ecosystem simpler as well as more compliant to guidelines and regulations.

My focus is also on to expansion and restructuring of IHMCL to post officers at field level. In short, we want to make IHMCL a world class tech organization which rapidly adopts change management.

You are cited as the youngest COO (41 years old) of IHMCL who managed to bring in a lot of vibrancy to the organisation. Your strategies and approach…

I am thankful to the Chairman NHAI and IHMCL Board especially my CMD for giving me this important assignment at a time when India is undergoing digital transformation in every field.

I have been a highway man earlier in my career which gave me the edge to understand the problems with dual perspectives – as a highway professional and as an ITS professional. I aim to solve problems in a better and efficient, creating a win-win situation. I communicate frequently with all the stakeholders through special WhatsApp groups so that there is hardly any communication gap. This also helps to understand and solve problems.

I like to be a team player- I believe a motivated team can meet any challenges and I try to keep motivating my team always. Very often, even by doing their jobs. And this helps achieve tough targets on time.

FASTag is a success story. Can you give the highlights?

The success of Electronic Toll Collection (FASTag) has been evident from its wide adoption and efficient revenue collection system. Put in action in 2014 on the Mumbai-Delhi stretch of the Golden Quadrilateral, the FASTag issuance reached 183 lakhs in 2022-23. ETC collection in 2022-23 was Rs, 54000 Cr, the highest ever. IHMCL has facilitated creation of 1400+ live toll plazas across the country with an average daily collection of Rs. 195Cr. Mandatory FASTag has helped reduction of fuel costs by Rs. 2800Cr/year approx. and has improved the efficiency of highway mobility.

IHMCL has also undertaken the task of setting up Toll Monitoring and Control Centre for real-time health monitoring of critical ETC equipment installed at toll plazas and consolidation of data.

Organising an international workshop on GNSS of a large dimension could have been challenging. What according to you have been the main takeaways?

Yes, it was a challenging task when the Secretary, MoRTH, in meeting in April this year asked us to have wider consultation through a workshop. First we thought of conducting it at a national level but when we understood the interest of international community to the Indian GNSS problem, we decided to give the workshop an international flavour.

For the next 45 days, it was intensive planning at the minutest level (even doing away with flowers!) that resulted in a very successful event with participation of more than 500 national and international delegates. We also issued concept note and EOI so that the deliberations on these could be included in the workshop.

I think the biggest takeaway from the workshop is the belief that Indian GNSS journey has kick-started in a grand way and with a wider consensus on the technology and transition. The democratization of ideas will help each stakeholder associated with it to add value to its journey.

IHMCL is going beyond tolling…

What is interesting is that application of FASTag has been extended to different segments. It is now used in parking plazas and plans are on to include parking spaces in airports and railway stations as well. The other use cases are maintenance charge for vehicles entering the forest areas, state border road check posts, Green tax collection and EV charging. Also under evaluation is extending FASTag to international vehicles entering India and to congestion charges.

What are the policy level initiatives orchestrated by IHMCL?

One of the recent initiatives by IHMCL is One Vehicle One FASTag – it cleaned up the entire ecosystem and allowed enforcement through FASTag. IHMCL was also instrumental in PoS policy for issuer banks to bring transparency and efficiency and remove malpractices in FASTag issuance. Other initiatives included ATMS Policy 2023 and SOPs related to standardisation of toll plaza operations.