Ex Microsoft, Rediff duo aim to replace email with their Whatsapp-meets-Google Maps SaaS product

Wednesday May 20, 2015 , 5 min Read

Emails have long been a convenient way for employees to interact with each other or their bosses. But, when it comes to short quick updates, email may not be the best option. Having all sorts of conversations over email adds to the clutter. Many startups have tried to topple email and Slack has so far been the most successful.

Organizations and managers spend a lot of time in coordinating with their colleagues on the field to know their location and make decisions on employee proximity and availability. There are many cases like sales, logistics, supply chain where location information, distance between two employees and being able to connect such teams together will be an important business time saver or even mean extra business. TeamTracker aims to address this market and make communication and co-ordination among teams easier.

What is it?

TeamTracker is positioning itself as a combination of WhatsApp and Google Maps for teams but, on a private office-only mobile, web communicator channels. The app aims to eliminate the need of calling up the mobile workforce to know where they are located and what steps they need to take next based on their location.

Users can track all the members within their team on their desktop or mobile, and communicate with them. The messages are also secured as they are using a private app to communicate with each other. Team logins are based on user IDs (company email) and personal passwords.

TeamTracker App uses Google Maps API, so it doesn’t offer premise level accuracy but users can track the area level information. In countries like Singapore, users’ can even know building level information.

Team

TeamTracker was cofounded by Santosh Maharshi and Dharmesh Kothari at Gray Matrix last year. They came up with the idea of TeamTracker when they realized that many of their clients wanted to transfer process management on the mobile devices without incurring huge infrastructure cost.

Santosh left Microsoft, Singapore last year and now works as the Director Innovations with Gray Matrix. He has managed large scale internet properties in India and Southeast Asia with brands like Rediff and Microsoft. The team strength at Gray Matrix is 60 and they have around 12-15 people working on TeamTracker at a time. Dharmesh is the President of Gray Matrix, an IT Solutions company based in India and US. Some of their clients include Pidilite India, Rediff.com, Viacom 18, HDFC Life and Johnson & Johnson.

yourstory-team-tracker-insidearticle1 — Dharmesh Kothari

Features

Communicate with the team: Users can create teams and manage them as a group, manager can send important messages to all the team members in the field and also chat one-on-one with individual team members and broadcast important messages to the whole team.

Locations of your team members: The app provides real time location information for teams on the field. Admins can locate their team members on the map and monitor check-ins and check-outs to understand team presence and attendance. Teammates can also locate each other to co-ordinate work.

Use cases

These features could be utilized for fields such as sales, marketing, logistics. Santosh re-iterated that TeamTracker is not a spying tool and the person with the mobile has control on broadcasting his or her location information and can simply log out from the app to stop broadcasting location information.

Besides the industrial scenarios, Gray Matrix positions their app as a utility for employee safety as well. The app can be used by family and managers to keep track of their employee’s safety while traveling to remote locations, during late hours or situations like disaster management.

Business Model and clientele

TeamTracker App is available for a monthly subscription at $3 (INR 180) per month / per user or at annual subscription rates of $2.5 (INR 150) per user / per month. They also offer a free trial for 14 days. The App is available on web, Android and the iOS version will be launched soon. Santosh added:

We cannot reveal the names of our clients but the industries they are in are pharma, logistics (fleets, cargo), field sales and marketing, banking and insurance.

Others in the sector

TeamTracker is in the intersection of the messaging and tracking services sectors. While other SaaS products aiming to replace email in this sector are HipChat, Slack, avaamo we’ve come across tracking services such as RideSafe, Pathfinder etc. With the number of mobile phone users and workforce increasing, the market for a service like TeamTracker which is at the intersection of both sectors is in a grey area, but looks promising.

Future plans

The startup is bootstrapped right now and aims to reach 500 companies or 5000 users by the end of the year. They are also planning to add more features to it and provide customised solutions to clients who need it.

While the main app available on the site and store functions on the SaaS model, for clients with 250+ user base, API integration requirements or custom process management needs can be offered a custom solution.

Website: Team Tracker