How This Bangalore-Based Startup Is Using AI & IoT To Modernise Fleet Management

For this week’s startup feature, Analytics India Magazine spoke to Srinivas Chitturi, CEO at MTAP Technologies to understand how the Bangalore-based startup is tracking, managing, and automating a wide range of transportation requests. 

Founded in 2016 by Srinivas Chitturi and Satvir Singh Kohli, MTAP Technologies Pvt Ltd is a SaaS-based provider of IoT-powered digital platforms. Headquartered in Bengaluru, the company leverages smart solutions that combine the power of the internet, cloud connectivity, and IoT to optimise fleet transportation operations for organisations across industries. 

Flagship products

MTAP offers a host of transport management apps and APIs, namely, Safetrax, Safebus, Autologix, Autoroutes. The three flagship products are Safetrax, Safebus, and Autologix. 

• Safetrax empowers transport managers to conduct the entire breadth of employee transportation operations over a single AI-powered platform. The platform is linked with cloud-based servers that send and retrieve the relevant data required for providing real-time updates to users while enabling transport admins to monitor trips and make real-time interventions remotely. The solution is equipped with a range of features such as Live Tracking, Auto-Routing, Remote Monitoring, Trip History, Detailed Reports and Analysis, and Auto-generating Paperless Invoices.

• SafeBus is a fleet management app designed to help schools, parents, and school bus fleet operators ensure the safety and security of students. The AI-enabled solution empowers the transport teams to monitor the driver behaviour and maintain detailed trip reports over the digital platform to optimise their school bus services while minimising the need for manual interventions. 

• Autologix is an automated platform that empowers fleet operators with superior end-to-end fleet management capabilities, executable from one dashboard. The AI-powered app can help the users manage travel requests and optimize the supply of vehicles in real-time.

What’s the differentiator

“At the time of MTAP’s launch, there were very few digital solutions that addressed the need-gaps in the fleet management space and even fewer that did not require a full-fledged physical infrastructure to operate. While organisations realised the need to digitise fleet management, they were unwilling to make the significant capital investment required to establish such a digital infrastructure in-house,” said Chitturi.

He added, “Our cloud-based approach helped us to tap into this market white space by eliminating the need for expensive hardware for digital fleet operations. This not only helped us address the issues of accuracy and efficiency that manual fleet operations suffered from but also brought down the costs associated with the digital transformation of the transport value chain. Another unique advantage that our tech-based solutions portfolio offers to users is our 24/7 availability, something that is difficult to come by in a hardware-heavy infrastructure.”

Use of AI & IoT

Chitturi said MTAP’s proprietary algorithms, in sync with IoT capabilities such as geo-fencing and GPS, enable live tracking of vehicles as well as the capturing of relevant location data of user devices. The tech-based platforms can thus run a deep analysis of key parameters such as vehicle stoppages, stoppage time, distance, transport requirements, fleet/employee schedules, and travel time on existing routes. The insights generated are then leveraged by the platforms to automatically identify and implement the most appropriate routes that allow for optimised utilisation of the vehicle fleet and seating capacity.

MTAP solutions also integrate features such as SOS alert, passenger verification, and driver behaviour to offer seamless, secure, and more cost- and time-efficient transport experience to all the stakeholders.

Core tech stack

The tech stack at MTAP Technologies is built upon the convergence of IoT, intelligence, cloud, and automation. The company uses a MERN stack to build the platform and Weka for predictive modelling. The vector machines are supported using LIBSVM, JAVAML for ML algorithms implemented in JAVA. Currently, MTAP is in the process of moving to oj! Algorithms library which uses Artificial Neural Networks.

Hiring at MTAP

Chitturi stated, “Given that we are a technology-first company offering digital fleet management services, most of our talent requirement is in our product and UI/UX teams. However, we do have a detailed framework in place to identify new talent requirements across all teams/functions. We have also devised and implemented a skills pipeline to keep track of emerging skill sets required across the organisation. These measures help us to minimise the time, cost, and business impact of any potential talent/skills shortage by ensuring that any need-gap is proactively addressed.”

He added, “The foremost thing that we look at while hiring is a commitment to continuous learning and growth. While hiring, we also evaluate people for their technical and analytical skills, as well as softer skills such as communication, teamwork, problem-solving mindset, etc.”

Roadmap

So far, the company has raised funds to the tune of $1.5 million.

“For us, at MTAP Technologies, the future is full of exciting possibilities. We have already registered an over 50% recovery since the lockdown was lifted and are planning to build on this momentum to drive annualised revenues to the tune of $5 million by 2023. Over the next five years, we plan to expand our services to more emerging markets across the world, especially within the high-potential Asia-Pacific and MENA regions. We also plan to consolidate our market leadership in freight/taxi fleet management, employee transport, and school bus fleet automation. To this end, we are constantly upgrading and improving our tech stack, end-user features, and functionality to provide solutions to a wider number of use cases,” said Chitturi.