For the past few years, startups are trying to gauge the Indian GPS market. They have introduced various technologies and innovations to woo consumers in the country, however, they are still far away from impressing people and making a dent in the market.
Vikram Kumar, who has various businesses in different countries, came across a head-on challenge to track day-to-day operational activities – tracking the movement of sales teams in real time.
An attempt to know the movement of his sales team, with a focus on activities such as time spent on each retailer and the resulting output, led him to develop a web-based version of a tracking platform. Later, it was developed into a full-fledged app by including a lot of useful and proactive feature for B2C and B2B usage.
In March 2016, Kumar launched Letstrack in the United Kingdom followed by a launch in India in October 2016.
“Letstrack is an app-to-app and app-to-device solution that goes way beyond just ‘whereabouts’ – it also helps you gather quality information that can help you strategize, plan, manage and optimize things you do in your everyday life,” says Vikram Kumar, Founder and CEO, Letstrack.
Women and child safety, automobile safety and optimization, team and fleet management are some of the top concerns that Letstrack app and device solutions address.
At a time when the market is seeing fierce competition in GPS Technology, Kumar has offered something unique.
He says he has made the tracking system more advanced. Besides, he also offers analytics, which can provide various data on vehicles such as mileage, engine performance and driver behavior to companies which are into fleet management.
The platform provides analyzed and quality information on smartphones, web browsers and emails in the form of push notifications, updates, reports and live feeds through easy to understand infographics and texts.
Currently, the platform provides services in nine cities, including Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Maharashtra, Bangalore and UP.
Business plan
The startup is bootstrapped. The company has appointed dealers and distributors to promote the app and devices. Besides, like any other product-selling company, it works on a model of 10 per cent gross margins per user. The app is, however, free to use.
Vikram adds that his aim is not to make money by selling tracking devices. He aims to take it to a different level where he wants to provide free app services and the cheapest hardware products to as many users as possible before he works on the revenue model.
Market size
According to ABI research, the GPS device market in traditional verticals will be valued at approximately $2 billion by 2021. The vehicle tracking market size was valued at $8 billion in 2015 and is anticipated to exceed $22 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of over 20 per cent from 2016 to 2023.
Experts say that though the market is undergoing a significant transition period as traditional markets struggle to find mass-market adoption, new technologies and markets will create a lot of upside potential for those that move quickly.
Why India is an important market
When asked why Vikram chose to launch the product in India, instantly after launch in the UK, he replied, “India apart from being a big growing market has a big need for security tracking and other solutions that Letstrack provides. The middle class is growing stronger by the day and the lifestyle is more occupied and active than before. Women and child safety, automobile safety and optimisation, team and fleet management are a few of the top concerns that made us launch this app in India.”
The founder and the team has a strong understanding of the Indian market, consumer and opportunities, he adds.
How are other players faring?
FleetRover, Zophop and Asset Trackr are some of the many platforms that offer services in location-based technology.
Goan-tech startup FleetRover, a web-based fleet tracking company, helps track vehicles on a real-time basis, relaying vital information to fleet owners. In May 2015, it raised $1,80,000 as seed funding from three angel investors in the US.
Bengaluru-based AssetTrackr offers fleet management solutions that can track, analyse and optimise business operations. The startup has also raised an angel round of $50,000 to invest in sales and manufacturing. The company has more than 300 clients including Big Basket, ITC, GMR Highways, DTDC and Spar Hypermarkets.
Besides the three names mentioned above, there are many other similar platforms which are doing well.
Expert take
Vikram claims to offer an extraordinary product which will supposedly bring a revolution in the GPS tracking industry.
However, experts beg to differ with such claims and say the company might make lofty claims about its products, but it is largely following the footsteps of others.
They feel that at one stage the company may differ from others or have a different business strategy, but it appears it is focusing on data and might play some data game based on the information that it is gathering by tracking vehicle details.
If the startup does something new in the segment, it might be able to bring about a revolution – as it claims.
