The Ahmedabad Municipal Corp. formally has cancelled the seven-year contract it had awarded Mumbai-based Kaizen Engineering Systems Pvt. Ltd. to provide a ticketing and smart card system for its bus and rapid-transit system.
The agency recently began a six-month trial with the Indo-Spanish consortium of Vayam Technologies Pvt. Ltd. and GMV S.A. of Spain as part of a six-year contract, an official from the corporation tells PaymentsSource.
In February 2009, the corporation had signed the seven-year, 1.5 billion-rupee contract with Kaizen to run a smart card ticketing system covering 170 buses and 280 bus stations. The agency later scaled down the contract to cover 30 bus stations and 50 buses for 741 million rupees.
“However, Kaizen failed to develop a system in the scheduled time, forcing us to issue a termination notice to them in December 2009,” he says.
In March, the city invited bids for its prepaid contactless smart card after the corporation found that Kaizen was unable to provide a system adaptable to the transport network, an official from the local transport authority, Ahmedabad Janmarg Ltd. told PaymentsSource at the time (
Kaizen still covers 26 buses, 43 bus stations in the city with its ticketing system, but the agency will phase it out by the end of this year. The company previously had provided Mumbai with its Go Mumbai smart card consumers use to access that city’s bus and rail networks.
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