Boosting the confidence of India’s 900 million voters on electronic voting machines (EVMs) is an important task. After a series of incidents where EVMs were found to have strayed — from hotels to abandoned on highways — the Election Commission mandated that vehicles transporting EVMs from polling stations to designated strongrooms have to be installed with GPS trackers. Behind the scenes of this mammoth task is a three-year-old startup — Letstrack —which is helping the government monitor the end-to-end movement of reserve EVMs and VVPATs.
Founded by Indian entrepreneur Vikram Kumar, the UK-headquartered GPS and IoT company claims to be able to track everything that moves. “Nearly 20 per cent of the vehicles that are being used in the election are using our service,” Kumar told this publication. In Punjab and Haryana, for instance, there are some 9,000 vehicles that used the technology provided by the company.
The company offers similar solutions for use in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) channels. “We have the infrastructure in place to be able to fit a device to any vehicle, anywhere in India, at the customers’ convenience within 48 hours,” Kumar said.
Going beyond just finding their whereabouts, Letstrack also helps gather quality information that can help strategise, plan, manage, and optimise day-to-day actions, added Kumar. “We are continuously offering and being asked to deliver bespoke additions to our portfolio. We are adding at least one new feature every single week,” he pointed out. For instance, he explains, Letstrack is now connected with Google AI and all a customer has to do to switch off their car engine automatically is say “Ok Google, Goodnight”. “Our tech is also capable of gathering key data to enable parents to track their older children when they begin driving, how their drivers are behaving behind the wheel, and even how efficiently crops are being harvested,” Kumar said.
GPS tracking isn’t new in India where over 400 GPS-tracking companies exist. But, what sets Letstrack apart is their distribution strategy, Kumar noted. “We serve customers in places like Jammu & Kashmir and Andaman & Nicobar. We have local manpower who would can come home, fit the device as well as train you with the app,” he said.
According to Kumar, Letstrack’s has a presence in over 1,500 heavily-branded retail outlets across India and has seen a “huge increase in mass distribution sales over 2018”. Letstrack claims its sales and revenue figures have risen over 600 per cent this year alone.
Currently, the bootstrapped startup is in the process of foraying into the US market. While it started off with connected car solutions, it now aims to expand into the connected homes space too and has set a goal of adding a million (10 lakh) customers to its existing 3.5 lakh users this year.