Clever Devices in Woodbury wins multimillion-dollar contract to supply software to buses in Brazil

Employees of Clever Devices Inc. did a double take when they saw a Brazilian drum core parade through the computer software developer’s headquarters in Woodbury.

“People were surprised; they didn’t know what was going on,” recalled Andrew Stanton, chief operating officer at Clever Devices. “But I thought it was a good way to celebrate winning the largest contract in company history.”

Clever Devices, founded in the basement of a Port Washington bar in the early 1980s, was the successful bidder for a multimillion-dollar contract to supply software for 14,000 public buses in São Paulo, Brazil.

The software enables the city's mass-transit agency and multiple bus contractors to manage their operations, including schedules, vehicle breakdowns and routine maintenance.

For riders, the software lets them know exactly how far away their bus is via mobile applications, website visits, text messages and signs at the bus stop, as well as making onboard announcements.

The São Paulo contract is for 10 years, with the potential for a five-year extension. The total value is 908.2 million Brazilian real, or about $180 million, according to an April announcement from Anderson Clayton Nogueira Maia, director of administration and infrastructure at the city’s transit agency SPTrans.

The new contract will lead to additional hiring by Clever Devices in Woodbury and in Brazil.

Stanton said the company is in the midst of a $5.7 million expansion project that will increase its computing capacity by 25% through the purchase of server systems and specialized software in the Woodbury office. He said 50 jobs would be added to the company’s local workforce, which numbered 216 people in January.

New York State is supporting the expansion project with low-cost electricity and tax credits tied to new jobs, Newsday reported last winter.

“We will bring in additional people in the U.S. to support the team in Brazil,” Stanton said this month, referring to the subsidiary Clever Devices do Brasil. “We’re going to need project managers, software engineers, electronic technicians and systems engineers.”

Brazil isn’t the first foreign country where Clever Devices has sold its software.

The company has supplied transit systems in Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario, Canada, for decades. A subsidiary that sells scheduling software has customers around the globe.

The Brazilian contract is the culmination of 4½ years of effort, according to Stanton, who led the small team that bid for the São Paulo work. He said Clever Devices identified Latin America as a growth opportunity eight years ago.

Besides São Paulo, other potential markets include Rio de Janeiro and Brasília in Brazil, Bogotá in Colombia, Santiago in Chile and Mexico City, Stanton said.

São Paulo, with more than 12.4 million people, is one of the biggest cities in the Western Hemisphere. And unlike the New York City and Nassau County buses that use Clever Devices’ software and are owned by the government, he said, the Brazilian city’s public buses are owned and operated by 28 private companies that bid for government contracts to provide service.

“People don’t have cars; they rely on buses to get around” in Latin America, he said. “We’re taking the technology that we developed in the U.S. and applying it to other parts of the world.”

Clever Devices recently promoted Monica Malhotra to the new position of chief international operations officer. She has been with the company for nearly 16 years.

CEO Frank Ingrassia said winning the São Paulo contract “not only reinforces our leadership in the [mass-transit] industry but also underscores our ability to meet the complex needs of major urban transit systems globally.”

By James T. Madore

james.madore@newsday.comJamesTMadore

James T. Madore writes about Long Island business news including the economy, development, and the relationship between government and business. He previously served as Albany bureau chief.