FleetRover: A Goa based product startup that provides fleet
tracking intelligence to Canadian companies
Jubin Mehta | June 16, 2015 at 1:56 pm
A Goan boy goes to study in Canada, works for a
while. Then, home beckons, so he returns to start
something of his own. Along with sparking a tech
community in Goa, he launches a product startup
with friends in Canada, develops teams in both
countries, and sells the solution to Canadian
companies to start with. He has also raised funds
in order to scale his business and develop the tech
scene in Goa. And this is not a one-off story in
India, it is happening in various parts of the country.
The company in question in this example is Fleetrover, and
the man behind it is Luke Sequeira. As his blog bio says, "A
UX designer based in Canada and Goa. I run dccper.com and
goa.me and I’m widely recognised as the least important man
on earth."
PHOTO: Aprup and Luke
Aprup Shet and Luke Sequeira
After college, Luke spent a few years gaining exposure and
experience before heading to Canada for a Masters' degree in
strategic brand management. Before going to Canada, Luke had
already started community building exercises in Goa with
goa.me and was intending to work further in the direction.
He took the plunge in 2013 and started Dccper, a UX Design
and product development company. During this time, he got
talking with partners Aprup Shet, Hannah Bain (UK) and Chris
Atkinson (Canada) and they came came up with an idea that
would require combining the group's talents and connections
in India and Canada. "We are still a small team, but a
distributed one, with about four people working on
development in Goa, while a small team works in sales in
Canada. Having lived in both places, such an arrangement
lets us have the best of both worlds," says Luke.
Fleetrover
What does Fleetrover do? It is an end-to-end enterprise
software for fleet management with the following features:
* Fleet dashboard: Lets businesses monitor their fleet and
drill down to specific assets and their current status or
outstanding alerts. This overview of operations can be
used to make critical, time-saving decisions that will
improve efficiency.
* Vehicle logs: Within a comprehensive timeline, businesses
can analyze concise records of all assets, interactions,
and behaviours.
* Warehouse logs: Help in tracking trailers and trucks as
they arrive and depart from warehouses, and utilize
RFID-enabled devices to produce precise time stamps and
reliable insights into inventory utilization.
* Vehicle Diagnostics: Assess vehicle maintenance,
performance and driver behaviour with contextualized
metrics in real-time.
Fleetrover has managed to raise $180,000 from angel investors
like Tim Chen, CEO, Nerdwallet and Sanjay Venkat, former VP,
Bank of America and partner at Cadian Capital. Talking of
the product, Luke explains, "FleetRover delivers uncluttered
insights into fleet movement, position, behaviour and fuel
consumption. It gives businesses actionable insights in
real-time, through GPS tracking hardware connected to vehicle
ECMs." The company has four clients as of now with the device
installed in close to 1000 trucks.
Logistics is a space seeing a lot of innovation
now, post the e-commerce boom. Companies like
Loginext in Mumbai are working on similar
vehicle-tracking technologies, while platforms like
Shippr and Returntrucks have built platforms in
order to organize trucks and lorries for
transportation. The segment is huge in India, and
technology has hardly infiltrated the process yet.
As large as the opportunity may seem, it is
difficult to educate stakeholders involved in the
sector and prove the value of the proposition.
For Fleetrover, the aim is to expand in Canada before looking
at other markets. Shuttling between Goa and Canada, Luke dons
multiple hats. And apart from devoting time to Dccper and
Fleetrover, Luke is working hard towards developing the tech
community in Goa.
There is not a lot happening but whatever little there is,
the signs are encouraging. There is a small team of
volunteers, of which Luke is a part, that runs Startup Goa
Jobs board, and makes it a point to conduct activities for
start-ups at regular intervals. CIBA is an incubator that is
based in Panjim which has an interesting portfolio, Cory York
has been actively building a base in Goa, Prajyot Mainkar is
an entrepreneur and Android evangelist in the region and
DesignBeard, one of the best design firms in India, is based
in Goa. And there are many more such efforts being made
towards getting the technology scene cracking.
Contact Luke Sequeira lukeseque...@gmail.com
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http://yourstory.com/2015/06/fleetrover-goa-startup/
