Umang Saraf
Umang Saraf is building TraffiCure at Lepton Software, a real-time traffic intelligence platform that gives city governments live visibility across 100% of their road network, every road, every lane, every 2 minutes. TraffiCure runs on Google's Roads Management Insights (RMI) programme, using anonymised speed data from over a billion smartphones with zero new hardware. Umang led the Pune City Traffic Police go-live in 3 weeks, where average vehicular speed on major corridors improved by 34%, an outcome covered by Times of India, Hindustan Times, and Times Now. He is now rolling out TraffiCure across Howrah, Bidhannagar, and Barrackpore in Kolkata.
Posts by Umang (8)
Smart Cities Were Supposed to Fix Traffic. They Didn't.
The Smart Cities Mission put sensors and cameras on more Indian junctions than anything before it, and traffic still got worse. Here's what I think actually went wrong, and why most of that data turned out to be nearly unusable.
Does Shillong Even Have a Traffic Problem?
Notes from onboarding a city with no traffic lights. I went in assuming Shillong barely had a traffic problem, and came back convinced this product might matter more to small, growing cities than to the big, broken ones we usually build for.
How Cities Monitor Traffic: 5 Methods Compared (2026)
Cities monitor traffic using loops, cameras, radar, manual surveys and probe data. Here's how each method works, what it costs, and what it leaves out.
Pune saved 1.27 million litres of fuel in 102 days
102 days with Pune City Police: 39,734 congestion build-ups cleared, 1.27 million litres of fuel saved, ₹13.4 crore retained, 2,937 tonnes of CO₂ avoided.
The 1954 instrument and what comes next
Google RMI is the first genuine successor to the 1954 Detroit origin-destination survey. Every measurement tool in between was a workaround for the same missing data.
Before the next ITMS camera: a planner's diagnostic
Five questions every Indian city should answer before approving the next ITMS camera tender. A data-driven diagnostic for planners.
Why 97% of your city's roads are invisible to traditional traffic systems
Camera-based systems cover junctions. Sensor loops cover highways. But what about the arterial roads, residential streets, and service lanes where most congestion actually builds?
The hidden cost of congestion nobody measures
Most cities track vehicle counts. Few measure the economic impact of every extra minute stuck in traffic.