LocoNav, is among the top Fleet Management System provider that provides a single platform to run your entire fleet operations. indianext interviewed the founding members about their products, the technologies they implement and their future plans.
Q.What was the motive or the thought process behind founding LocoNav?
We both share a passion for purpose led technological innovation. Since the beginning of our partnership first as colleagues at ClearTax and then as business partners, our goal has been to build a global, scalable business solution powered by technology, which not only has an incrementally positive impact but is also accessible. We started out exploring opportunities in the B2B space, our first venture was building a freight marketplace. As our interaction with fleet owners grew during our freight pilot we realised that there was a rudimentary problem that wasn’t being solved for. Undermanaged vehicle and driver visibility have costs for the business. For instance, once a driver is on the road the only way the fleet owner can get in touch with them is through a phone call. Now if for some reason the driver is unreachable the owner would have no way of knowing or mitigating any financial losses that may occur. The driver may get a flat tyre on his way, there may be an instance of fuel theft, and as is in most cases the driver wouldnt have any additional cash for contingencies, the trip would suffer a financial loss. Here is when we realised that the supply chain industry that manages billions of dollars worth of goods had completely ignored an issue so fundamental to their operations, one that was adding to costs and could be solved by leveraging the power of tech.
In fact the overall penetration of technology enabling fleet visibility was only about 5% in India. Most fleet owners either had no clue of where to source such a technology or the prices were prohibitively high. Access was further restricted because any communication around fleet tech tends to be jargon heavy, completely discounting differences in education and languages people speak. Additionally, most of these technologies were being developed in the US and Europe which, for several reasons, were beyond the reach of even large fleet owners.
LocoNav is the manifestation of our vision to democratise access to fleet tech across emerging markets. By leveraging the power of IoT and AI we bring enormous amounts of data generated from each vehicle onto a single platform. This data then enables the safety of the driver and the vehicle along with optimizing costs associated with different parts of the transportation process.
Q.Please tell us something about LocoNav’s tracking platform and how it is different from other fleet trackers available?
We began with building our solutions from the ground up to serve the simplest use case of the location to complex business applications like predictive analytics and now even cater to the customized needs of a specific industry. The objective is to democratize access to fleet management in every way – whether it is to dive into each step with the end-users – drivers, owners, operators, and the businesses that use the service – to build bespoke solutions, we want to make fleet-tech as ubiquitous as digital payments. We are aiming to be a one-stop, all-in-one solution for fleet management rather than just serve a sliver of the ecosystem.
What makes LocoNav special is how easy it is to use for the fleet owner and operator through our simple, intuitive interface that works on mobile and desktop. Given the diversity and varied backgrounds of end customers and their drivers, our fleet management platform is available in 10+ languages that include Arabic, French and even Punjabi. We are already working on adding several more to truly democratize access to fleet tech in all the emerging markets we operate in.
We recently introduced a disruptive combo of Dashcam and AI-enabled Advanced Video Telematics in India and other emerging markets around the world. Our easy-to-use video telematics solutions prevent accidents by alerting the driver of potential untoward on-road incidents before they can happen, help owners mitigate liability risk through stored incident footage, and also help operators coach drivers to improve their driving behavior. All of these combine to lower operational costs, prevent and protect against false claims, and ensure safety for drivers, fleet, and business. For us, advanced video telematics is all about “seeing is believing” and through AI-powered video tech, we can offer instant alerts and liability protection to ensure the fleet operators/owners are always aware of each vehicle and driver while on-trip. The Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), includes stop signs and speed violations warnings, uses AI-powered sensors to warn the driver in real-time of any possible forward collision or lane drifting. This system also offers live video-streaming through a dual-channel dashboard camera that faces both the driver and the road. The Driver Monitoring System (DMS) of LocoNav keeps track of driver distraction, driver fatigue, drowsiness as well as face ID to examine potential risk factors and alerts both driver and the fleet manager. Smart alerts give the fleet operator immediate notification of dangerous events like harsh braking, speeding, distracted driving, or sharp vehicle turning.
Q.We hear that you are expanding with new recruits, what are your expectations from this move?
We are now 5 years old in this industry and our company is at an exciting juncture at this point. As we are aggressively expanding to other emerging markets, the aim is to build a multi-disciplinary global team. In the last few months, we have onboarded industry leaders with varied expertise to drive strategic growth. This includes Samit Srivastava (ex-Jubilant Food Works, Jubilant Life Sciences, HealthKart, Perfetti Van Melle) as Chief Business Officer and CEO-SaaS Global, Ashish Chawla (ex-OYO) as Head of Strategy, and Seema Chawla (ex-VP & Head Marketing – Hike, and VP Marketing – Hotstar International) as the Chief Marketing Officer. Their expertise will act as catalysts in realizing LocoNav’s vision. Earlier this year, Anjali Joshi (Ex-Google VP-Product Management) joined our Board of Directors.
Q.What was LocoNav’s role during the pandemic? How did your customers leverage the platform during the multiple Covid waves?
When COVID-19 struck, we faced a situation never seen before. We had to fundamentally change the way we work to continue to empower fleet operators and drivers across the globe. Covid-19 caused severe disruptions in the logistics industry because of the heavy restrictions on the movement of goods and people. We doubled down on our existing customers’ experience during that time – doing our part in ensuring that fleets – especially those employed in movement of essential goods – had undisrupted service. We also invested time in going deeper into our product roadmap, honing our existing offerings as well as launching new products. In partnership with Milaap and GiveIndia, we also initiated a COVID-19 Driver relief fund to provide monetary and basic essentials support to truck drivers and their families in need across India.
Q.Where according to you does India stand in IoT presently? What according to you is needed to move forward from where we are, especially in the logistics and fleet management sector?
IoT has been at the core of driving operational efficiency for industries, especially legacy-driven, with rudimentary technologies in place. The logistics industry is no exception. The IoT ecosystem has empowered companies to build smart solutions and automate basic activities bringing in more productivity and saving running costs. Automation enables supply chain processes to move at a much faster pace. By making use of automation in logistics at different stages, from tracking and procurement to end-to-end flow of goods, companies can create a huge difference in their operations. We believe that supply chain stands to gain the most out of IoT innovations in the near future. Logistics expenditure is the largest budgetary item for shippers, hence reducing the cost is always a priority. The power of IoT (Internet of Things) coupled with sharp data-driven insights when applied at different levels of the supply chain directly impacts business efficiency leading to faster revenue generation and cost reduction. The issue is the slow adoption of these solutions given the diverse nature of the category. Manufacturers and shippers have to start realizing that the best way to have a competitive advantage is to adopt AI and IoT-backed innovations to run a sustainable business.
Q.LocoNav is expected to be India’s answer to “Samsara”. Where does LocoNav stand in materializing this? What are the milestones that you still aim to achieve?
The fleet management industry has been around for decades, however, it is largely fragmented. In developed markets, our peers have been successful in bringing fleet management to mainstream conversation. There the logistics industries in the West have access to modern technologies, tech-savvy, and relatively more educated drivers, but the emerging world is a completely different ball-game. The lion’s share of commercial vehicles – more than 250 Million – and growing at 10% year on year are in the developing and emerging countries of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Most of these vehicles don’t have easy, or any, access to such solutions to run their vehicle businesses efficiently. We represent these 250 Million vehicles and their millions of fleet operators and drivers. No one has ambitiously built a large business in these global high-growth markets; we see ourselves as the first mover. We are bringing B2B fleet management solutions in markets that are extremely price-sensitive, have diverse realities of telecom connectivity, access to affordable hardware and easy-to-use software, multilingual users at varying stages of familiarity with the category and its benefits. When we talk of democratising access, this is the crux – to collaborate with each existing partner and reseller that already exists in the category as well as help create new ones, while educating fleet owners and operators of the incredible value and prosperity that fleet management solutions can bring to their businesses and lives.
We have some incredible growth plans for the future but at the heart of all these goals is to create tangible, on-ground impact for a sector that sometimes gets subsumed into the larger logistics and supply chain industry and remains unseen by the world at large. We are building the world’s largest network of connected commercial vehicles and leveraging that network to build a full-stack fleet services ecosystem. We are also strengthening our tech muscle by building technology and data science teams across San Francisco, Gurgaon, and Bengaluru. In the Indian Fleet-Tech industry, we want to double down on our market leadership over the next 2 years and also look at emulating our success in building our marketplace of services across other emerging markets. We want to build additional partnerships and channels, make strategic acquisitions, as well as establish a local presence in key geographies apart from the 30+ countries we are already present in.
