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
--
http://yourstory.com/2015/06/fleetrover-goa-startup/

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