The age-old transport industry in India is set to go high-tech with information technology making inroads to keep a track of its logistics.
Though the surface transport sector has been growing at 10-12 per cent annually and has an edge over the Indian railways in the movement of goods barring the bulk items (coal, steel and cement), the absence of effective communication network has put paid to its efforts to become efficient/smart and expand its operations wider.
With 3 million trucks criss-crossing the country to ferry tonnes of goods valued at billions of rupees on a given day, keeping track of their movement has been a bane for leading transport operators/contractors.
About 1.5 million of them operate in south India, with the largest number of them concentrated at Namakkal in Tamil Nadu (29,000 trucks) and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh (25,000 trucks).
Besides other parts of the two states, the rest are scattered in Karnataka and Kerala.
Cashing in on the convergence of ICT (information and communication technologies), the Bangalore-based BOW Network Ltd has come out with a unique vehicle tracking system for the transport industry that will not only reduce operational costs, but also enable all its stakeholders to monitor the movement of their goods across the country at low cost.
Claimed to be the first of kind in the country, the BOW (Bharath on Wheels) system uses the hub and spoke method to keep track of a vehicle anywhere in the country at the cost of a local call.
"The biggest problem faced by the multi-billion transport industry in India is the location of its vehicles on the move day and night. Once a truck leaves the consignor's place, there is no means of verifying its movement till it reaches the destination," BOW managing director P S Selvaraj told rediff.com in Bangalore on Thursday.
By using a vast network of franchises and tracking points on the national and state highways, the newly set-up enterprise solutions company offers an interactive voice response system (IVRS) to provide accurate and up-to-date information on the vehicle's location, date, time and any message the vehicle's driver has to convey to his operator or even the customer whose freight is being shipped.
"Unlike in the case of GPS or GSM, our IVRS operates without any additional gadget being fixed to the vehicle. Designed and developed with indigenous software and hardware, the system runs on BOW servers with high-speed data transmission, auto data back-up and recovery and high security network for uninterrupted service," Selvaraj explained.
So how does the system operate?
Vehicle operators who register with the company for a one-time fee of Rs 1,100 are given a smart card, christened BOW Card.
For the non-registered, the service is offered through a Trip Card.
The company, for the moment, is offering the BOW Card for Rs 500. The monthly service charges for using the system will be Rs 100 for a vehicle with state permit, Rs 200 for zonal permit and Rs 300 for national permit.
The Trip Cards are priced at Rs 75 for a 5-day trip and Rs 125 for a 10-day trip. The cards will enable corporates/companies and individual customers to keep a track of their consignment and delivery schedule.
The operator, in turn, hands over the card to the driver of each vehicle for providing information on the journey and consignment from pre-designated tracking points on the way.
At the cost of a local call, the driver updates the operator by using the BOW Card from the designated phone booths, which will be located at check-posts, select dhabas (eating joints), truck terminals, entry/exit points on inter-state borders, and petrol/diesel outlets on state/national highways.
Through a network of franchises and tracking points, the recorded information (voice data) about the vehicle and its consignments will be accessible to consignors/consignees, transport firms, corporates/vehicle owners, agents/brokers and even customers whose goods are in transit.
The information will also be available online on the company's Web site www.bharatonwheels.com and offline through the IVRS solution.
The information is stored in an area franchise office online, where data compiling and transmission of messages take place. The data is sent to BOW dedicated servers for access through the Internet.
"Our studies have revealed that on an average, a truck driver who is transporting goods from north to south or east to west in the country spends about Rs 2,000 per trip to keep the operator/owner informed about his location and the goods by using the STD (subscriber trunk dialling) line. The latter also end up using Rs 500-800 to interact with their drivers on the move," Selvaraj disclosed.
By using our IVRS, the communication costs will drastically drop to Rs 500, including the cost of local calls a driver would be making using the smart card.
"This apart, the network enables operators and drivers to communicate in the event of vehicle's breakdown, repairs, sickness or accidents on the route," Selvaraj pointed out.
The company is targeting about 200,000 trucks in the next six months in south India and expands the network to other parts of the country in a year.
It has already appointed 50 trained franchises to launch the operations. The network will be increased to 125 franchises by the year-end, with their locations being in state capitals, major cities/towns and districts.
Set up privately by five promoters with an authorised capital of Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million), the company has not disclosed how much it has invested in developing its IVRS, the infrastructure and operational costs.
But the managing director has claimed that BOW would break-even in six months with a monthly revenue of Rs 6 crore (Rs 60 million) when fully operational.