Pune: How would you react if someone sitting remotely in Pune sends a mobile push notification to you that your vehicle will breakdown in the next few days because of probable failure of a small internal component? Just as you would be surprised, a few truck drivers, fleet operators and original equipment manufacturers (OEM) were also amazed by this level of predictive insights in real-time provided by Intangles, a solutions provider backed by the revolutionary digital twin (DT) technology and machine learning paradigms.
Founded by Anup Patil, Jayashri Patil, Neil Unadkat and Aman Singh in 2016, this Pune-based startup is now at the forefront of solving real-world problems of commercial vehicle fleets by allowing them to monitor, benchmark, and conduct predictive maintenance of assets to enhance their overall uptime and profitability.
In the beginning…
A first-generation entrepreneur, Anup Patil had co-founded Tavisca Solutions, a travel tech company in 2008, which was acquired in 2018 by CXLoyalty, a USD 1 billion loyalty and customer engagement solutions firm. He laid the groundwork for Intangles, based on an IoT-based technology that enables the replication of a physical asset into its digital counterpart in 2016.
Says Anup, “It started on a simple premise and we did multiple pivots based on market validation. My co-founders Neil, Aman and Jayashri were also looking at something challenging and that’s when we started talking.”
After developing the first prototype, Anup realised that there was no problem to be solved with cars, as people maintain their private vehicles, they are well-serviced and nobody likes to be told how they should be driving.
“Once we plugged our device on one of the trucks parked at Pimpri-Chinchwad Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC). We identified that the fuel line was choked due to which the vehicle was experiencing 25 per cent loss of fuel economy. The truck was running for 200 kilometres everyday which resulted in a loss of about Rs40,000 for the owner. If the owner had an insight that the fuel line was choked up, he could have got it repaired in just Rs300-400. Similar things were happening with other vehicles and that’s when we realised that the logistics industry requires a solution desperately,” said Anup.
Regulatory challenges
The first challenge Anup and his team faced was the regulations in metro and non-metro cities. Anup said, “Our first customer was Avinash Carriers from Satara. They had 43 vehicles plying between Surat and Bengaluru. In October 2016, we gave them a proposal to build a system and monitor the performance of their vehicles. When we plugged in our device, we realised that the vehicles had no data for us to analyse. India was still on BS III regulation which meant most of the engines were mechanical engines. Data could be gathered only for BS IV complaint vehicles registered in metros. So, we could plug our devices only in six vehicles and six sensors.”
Out of the ‘purple’
Anup managed to get Purple Prasanna Mobility Solutions onboard. Intangles deployed their device on one of their BS IV compliant buses, which was operating for Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) on contract-basis and plying on Ahmednagar road route. Intangles was monitoring seven vehicles at that time, with all devices deployed free of cost.
Recalling one incident, Anup said, “Three days later the Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) bus threw an engine overheating alert. We informed their maintenance team, but the driver refused to acknowledge the same. One hour later the bus broke down in front of a mall, causing major roadblock and the operators had to pay a penalty besides sending another alternative vehicle.”
“We were then asked to deploy devices on 10 vehicles. We worked closely with the service team, monitoring performance and giving them insights in terms of what exactly is happening real-time on the road. Within 15 days, performance of those vehicles improved, helped them bring into a good state and prevented numerous breakdowns. Three weeks later, we got our first order of 200 vehicles. That’s when we realised, we are sitting on something really huge. The whole world was talking about diagnostics and here we were doing predictive analytics – predicting the failure of components,” stated Anup.
Digital twin moat
Nobody was looking at the data – already available in the market for everybody – from an ‘interesting angle’. Intangles created a ‘barrier of entry’ for others by creating a quad core processor-based hardware that collects data at a rapid rate and by creating virtual sensors in the cloud – also called as digital twin.
Anup said, “All modern powertrains are complicated and closed loop systems. It has become difficult for a roadside mechanic to just look at the vehicle, hear what the driver is saying and understand what is happening with the vehicle. Now it has to be repaired or looked into by a skilled operator. For fleet operators with that level of complexity when the vehicles are at remote locations, and when they want to make a decision whether vehicles laden with goods should go to a service station if there is a fault, or continue to operate in current condition is something that has become even more important.”
“Based on data gathered through OEM deployed sensors, we build virtual sensors in the cloud. Besides engine temperature, ambient temperature, load on vehicle, etc additional parameters are looked into while building a virtual sensor. On the basis of that, we do the analytics about how an engine is performing. Similarly, we build digital twins for intercoolers, turbochargers, batteries, alternators, air intake systems, fuel intake systems, etc,” Anup said.
•BS III vehicles – 6 sensors onboard
•BS IV vehicles – 40 plus sensors
•BS VI vehicles –70 plus sensors
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Offerings
•Vehicle health monitoring
oHistoric and real-time data helps deliver warnings/alerts of possible failures, leading to significant reduction in the on-road break-down of vehicles, thereby increasing operational hours and lowering maintenance/repair costs.
•Driver behaviour monitoring
oIntangles has created a structured score card for drivers to make a part of the new ecosystem. Intangles conducts a structured driver training and certification programmes to educate them on all aspects of driver behaviour, whether it is transmission utilisation or driving down the hill in neutral gear, and make them better at what they are doing.
•Fuel monitoring
oFuel pilferage is a major concern for fleet operators. Intangles has developed a patented-algorithm where it understands the amount of fuel being filled, consumed and if there is any pilferage, then how much amount of fuel has been taken out, with the date, time and location. Besides preventing adulterated fuel getting back into the system, it gives fleet operators a good insight in terms of where they are actually losing money.
•Ad blue tracking
oWith the adoption of vehicular emissions regulations, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and diesel particulate filter (DPF) monitoring has become extremely important. In case of any malfunction, the regulation requires that the vehicle be put into a ‘torque limit mode’, which means they cannot cross a certain speed. Intangles helps fleet operators to raise a preventive alert before vehicles go bad and take suitable action.
•Operations automation
oCommercial vehicles generally get very less time in between their trips for scheduled maintenance and thus are often let go with some very elementary check-ups. This leads to vehicle breakdowns because of part-failures and tyre-bursts during commutes. OEM product development team understands ‘mean time to repair’ and ‘mean distance between failure’ for each and every component. They are able to pass on the warranty liability to the tier 1 suppliers. Service station personnel are able to validate repairs to be done in warranty or out of warranty
Explaining the benefits of Intangles solutions, Anup said, “OEM-deployed sensors are always talking to each other and this communication takes place through engine control unit (ECU) or engine management system (EMS). OEMs can avail data driven validation for fuel efficiency numbers that they have committed to dealers. Thus, business development teams of OEMs can understand which segments are operating in a certain way, who has a better demand, who is maintaining their vehicles properly, how tech-savvy they are, and hence pitch their own products for a better penetration in a fleet.”
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Onboarding process
•10 to 15 mins – Duration for deploying devices
•150 kms or 4 hours – Vehicles operated before generating insightful data
•24 hours – fleet operators understand what’s happening with their vehicle
Customers
•1,100 fleet operators from India, Australia, Turkey, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Belgium, Middle East, North America.
•Partnered with some Fortune 500 companies and going live with them soon
•An automotive company, for all their 3 tonne and above commercial vehicles have Intangles solutions deployed as a standard factory fitment under the brand name of iMax.
•Customer break-up: 58% from logistics segment, 37% from passenger transit and 5% from off-highway equipment
Scope of error – 4 per cent
Intangles works with a confidence index of 96 per cent. This essentially means that the system fires an alert if it has reached confidence index of 96 per cent, and if it not, then it doesn’t raise the alert. This means false positive alert are not raised. The alerts are sent to clients on their desktop, mobile or WhatsApp as a push notification.
Insurance incentives
Says Anup, “We have kind of become Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited (CIBIL) of fleet operators and hence we are in talks with insurance providers. We know how well the vehicles are maintained, in what segment they are operating, what are the safety issues, what is the kind of driver training programme. We are creating a scorecard around overall fleet operations. This means the insurance providers can underwrite risk with a structured score around it, rather than applying a templatised score.”
“There is a big incentive for fleet operators. They can always opt-in and say because my score is so good, I would like to get a better insurance quotation. They can opt-out and choose not to disclose their score, improvise and go back to insurance providers,” said Anup.
Identifying design flaws
OEMs can also recall their products with flawed designs. Sharing such experiences, Anup said, “We were able to identify injector failure with one of the OEM products. There was design flaw in emission controller of another OEM.”
“One of the fleet operators were complaining that their vehicles were going in the torque limit mode. The EMS was not showing any fault code. The OEM was taking lot of beating in the market. We identified the problem in after-treatment systems. A developer had forgotten to capture the fault code in the firmware. The OEM got back to the tier 1 suppliers, recalled all vehicles and fixed them free of cost. The savings must have been at least of ₹50 to 100 crore,” said Anup.
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Revenue
•Device – ₹9,000
•Software-as-a-service (SaaS) recurring subscription – ₹4,200 to 4,800 – depending on features subscribed
•OEMs pay for 3-year subscription in advance on behalf of fleet operators
•If fleet operators opt later then they are charged with annual subscription
•FY 21 – Close to $1.5 mn (45 per cent from SaaS and 55 per cent from Device)
•FY 16 – ₹11 lakh
Funding
•$2mn from founders, angel investors and HNIs
•Looking for next round of funding of $10 million (for scaling up across different geographies)
Team
•Total – 120
•Headquarter Pune, R&D team in Bengaluru
•Sales, account managers and field engineers spread across India
•Pune office – design, hardware assembly, technical and development team
Total addressable market
•140 million commercial vehicles ply across globe – $40 billion market
•Marketplace for insurance, micro-finance, spare part, tyre companies; $70 billion dollars
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Competitors
•Automile (US) – fleet and asset tracking
•Samsara (US) – improve fleet productivity
•Cambridge Mobile Telematics (Cambridge, Chennai) – making roads and drivers safer
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Internet of Things (IoT) startups
•India – 2817 (Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade -DPIIT recognised – 1,194)
•Maharashtra – 503 (214)
•Pune – 191 (84)
Source: Startup India Portal, Government of India
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