How fleet management firms are navigating Covid

In May 2020, after four phases of nationwide lockdowns due to the coronavirus, India started hobbling towards unlocking. Districts were colour-coded according to the positivity rate and restrictions were eased accordingly. Containment zones remained closed, though.Businesses that were shut since March started gulping air as the unlock window started to open. But they struggled to figure out how employees and essential workers can travel without landing in or going through a containment zone. This was important, as a misstep meant possible contamination and quarantine.In the midst of this chaos, Srinivas Chitturi had a eureka moment. His firm, Bengaluru-based MTAP Technologies, provides SaaS to streamline the fleet management operations of service providers to companies and schools. Why not, thought Chitturi, use the company’s services to help essential workers and fleet operators who have to commute now but also avoid containment zones. So MTAP came up with a software that uses geofencing to detect Covid zones in a route and suggest an alternative course of travel.“If, say, a delivery executive has to go to a specific location, we will notify him that it falls in a containment zone. In case the location is near a containment zone, it will give the delivery executive a route that does not go through the red zone,” explains Chitturi, the CEO and co-founder of MTAP Technologies, which was set up in 2013.MTAP started providing automated solutions to several clients to make the trips of their employees safer and easier. “This updated info can be very helpful for essential workers and individuals who are required to step out of their homes daily — such as warehouse workers or hyper-local delivery staff,” Chitturi says.The algorithm even determines the optimal seating capacity in a vehicle within the social distancing guidelines at the same time. The software can alert a company if its employee is living in or near a Covid-containment zone. This is helpful when a driver goes to pick up or drop the employee. Other features include contactless boarding and monitoring through in-vehicle cameras. MTAP can also collect Covid self-declarations from vehicle drivers and passengers.Potential in the PandemicSuch services have helped companies take better routing decisions and reduce the chances of accidental Covid-19 transmission. Today, MTAP has over 100 customers in India, Vietnam, the Philippines and the Middle East, including DHL, Flipkart, HCL, Ericsson, Myntra, TESCO, Omega Healthcare and Parexel. In India, it covers 16 cities.Chitturi says they did more than Rs 500 crore worth of transport billing on the platform. In 2019-20, the company had earned revenue of Rs 13 crore.Such business has hit a sweet spot at a time when the $14.59-billion global fleet management software market (in 2019) is estimated to reach $50.09 billion by 2027, with a CAGR of 16.8%, according to a Fortune Business Insights report. 84847440Chitturi even has an expansion road map in place. “Everything is going towards hyperlocal, where you can get anything delivered from nearby shops. While many technology companies have emerged to cater to the demand side of this market, we want to focus on the fulfilment side. This means helping these companies with verification proof of delivery executives, routes to take, volume to pick up — we provide the entire automation cycle,” he says.This is a big turnaround for MTAP, which is in a sector that was floored by the pandemic. Lockdowns and fear of the coronavirus had discouraged people from leaving their homes, leaving fleet management companies in the lurch. Work from home meant staffers did not need a pick up or drop. Despite these challenges, some firms in this segment, like MTAP, were able to find opportunities to survive — even thrive, in some cases.Pune-based location intelligence platform Dista.ai also started mapping the containment zones, assigned resources for minimum exposure and made schedules for optimal routes. “With Dista, you can define zones either by pin codes or by drawing them on a map. Not only did it help define zones for better customer serviceability, but it also helped companies avoid these areas, keeping employee exposure to the minimum,” says CEO Shishir Gokhale.The second wave saw more defined delivery rules at district, city and state levels, he says. There were also specific rules for essential and non-essential services and what deliveries were allowed and in which zones. “We helped organisations redefine their serviceable areas with new guidelines and traffic patterns. This helped them cater to areas that were initially far off or were unserviceable due to distance and traffic constraints.”Game of PlanningGokhale explains that one of key learnings in this period has been adjusting to the shift in clients’ operations. Earlier, many restaurants and small outlets used third-party delivery personnel. As the pandemic forced cost reductions, these restaurants started to use their own staff for deliveries. “They wanted to find ways to re-employ their people instead of letting them go,” he says.Territorial-based planning has gained a lot more prominence, says Mohneesh Saxena, Senior VP-Product and Strategy at logistics planning and optimisation firm Locus. This was seen in e-commerce and food delivery services during the second wave. “It is now imperative to account for nuances of regions and micro regions in the last-mile delivery value chain, given the multitude of constraints put forth by the pandemic,” he says. 84847465While the Bengaluru-based company has always considered zone-based routing its forte, the pandemic threw up new challenges. Locus — which was founded in 2015 and has operations in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and the Middle East — had to deal with a fluid situation as containment rules were changing regularly. “As countries recovered at different paces, new zones were introduced, removed or reintroduced at different times. These zones came up with separate challenges and multiple kinds of restrictions across geographies. This made dispatch planning even more challenging for companies,” says Saxena.The behaviour within these zones varied even after the lockdowns were lifted, as residential societies and other institutions restricted the entry of delivery personnel, he says. This led to missed deliveries and wasted time.But Locus — which has Unilever, Mondelez International, Nestle and Blue Dart, among others as clients — seems to have done well, considering that it raised $50 million in the Series C round. It was led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and saw participation from Qualcomm Ventures, Tiger Global and Falcon Edge.Transporting EssentialsHome delivery became more of a necessity than convenience during the pandemic. Work from home (WFH) — once a preserve of the few and the envy of many — has become the norm. However, implementing WFH was easier said than done for many corporations. Homes aren’t ideally designed to enable a work environment. Companies had to shift devices to their employees’ homes so that work could go on.But WFH was a boon for fleet operators such as Routematic, which had lost its main source of income as companies no longer needed cab services. With its fleet of vehicles lying idle, Routematic pivoted into delivery of office equipment and devices to employees.Arjun Bhojaraj Manipal, VP-Business Development at Routematic, explains how they grabbed an opportunity amid the crisis. “As soon as the lockdown started, there was a massive need for transporting a lot of technical infrastructure such as laptops, PCs and dongles to employees’ homes. As regulations around cab services were not clear, many cab companies had shut down their business. This is where we came in.”Later, companies realised that some essential workers had to report to offices, and they needed safe and dependable transportation. “We helped these essential workers with their daily commute. These included people who needed to be in office every day — for example, the IT guys who manage servers, accountants and administrative staff,” Manipal says.To do this, Routematic had to upgrade its safety and hygiene standards. It had to ensure cars, drivers, and passengers were sanitised. We monitored the temperature of the drivers before a trip. A plastic partition separated the front and backseats. Health and vaccination status of drivers and passengers, a trip history feature and mapping of consignment zones ensured everyone remained safe. It also helped in contact tracing in case a driver or staffer became Covid positive.This year, too, Bengaluru-based Routematic could capitalise on a business opportunity when companies started vaccinating camps for its employees. They wanted safe transport options to the vaccination venues and back, in the midst of the second Covid wave and strict lockdowns. “There was also transport and logistics involved for medical supplies. Companies wanted to store oxygen concentrators in their office and we transported these equipment across various offices in around four cities,” Manipal adds. 84847535Routematic’s efforts have paid off. It raised $2 million from Bosch last November and reached a valuation of $28 million.Helping HandIn Mumbai, Everest Fleet was among the firms that pivoted from being a fleet management platform to a safe transporter of frontline corporate workers. When the pandemic hit, it started receiving calls for transport services for emergency purposes, such as banking and hospital operations.Siddharth Ladsariya, co-founder, says it started the emergency transport service through WhatsApp broadcasts to family and friends. It received 1,200 requests within a month. Several appeals for help were from people who had friends or relatives in hospitals. “During the first Covid wave, there were several restrictions. We had to move pillar to post to obtain the required permits. However, during the second Covid wave, the government realised the importance of keeping cab services running. It was easier for us to implement our services. There was a massive need for essential transport services during the second wave as the medical infrastructure was under pressure,” he says.Everest Fleet’s employees also were affected by Covid. But, Ladsariya says, they took all precautionary measures and ensured that their track record was never blemished.Locus’ Saxena says their experience during the pandemic has revealed the challenges in the supply chain. There is a need for robust, AI-based planning as well as an increased need for contingency planning. “Companies need to understand their supply chain network design end-to-end to understand vulnerabilities and consequently optimise their operations based on their supply chain robustness,” he adds.As the Coronavirus infections rise and fall and warnings of a third wave get louder, transport services are again likely to become the need of the hour.(Editing by Ram Mohan)

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