Three friends join hands to build solutions that help the common man
In a world where apps rule everything, Sigmapeiron Software is looking at technology differently. As a platform that seeks to provide solutions to day-to-day problems, it has currently begun with SeekWiz, a location-tracking device.
We live in an ultra-busy world of working couples, where effective transport within city limits is the need of the hour. While platforms like Ola, Uber, and ZipGo work towards solving the problem of transport, they don’t do away with the hassle of communication during the travel.
It was this problem that 32-year-old software engineer Shrikant Sawant, operations guy Bhushan Bhagwat, and 29-year-old coding expert Chandu Mohan were interested in solving. The trio has been friends for a while. Having been part of IT companies for over 10 years, they decided to take the plunge two years ago.
The beginnings
They started Sigmapeiron with a roadmap of building three products over five years. Bhushan, who has over a decade of experience in his field, says that in today’s day and age, every member of the family is a working professional and has to travel, whether within the city or outside of it.
There is one thing almost every family has — a WhatsApp group that serves as the communication channel. So, every time a member of the family goes to work or starts for home, messages informing each other about the commute are exchanged. It is just the state of “being-in-the-know” that matters.
Taking cue, the trio thought of building a platform which keeps people’s near and dear ones in the loop without the hassle of calls and messages. Says Bhushan,
“Also, we wanted this to be a one-stop shop where the solution will cater to all possible scenarios that satisfy location-sharing requirements.”
Building the road map
Each of the three products they set out to build has its own challenges in terms of technical knowledge, market readiness, and more importantly, being able to fund the products.
“We worked on fine-tuning the road map, doing all the research needed, and gearing ourselves up technically. It was then that the eureka movement just provided us with a solution to an existent problem which just fell into place in terms of all these factors,” says Bhushan.
It was then that SeekWiz, a platform that lets people locate their loved ones without any dependence on location requests, was born.
Through SeekWiz, the team provides customers with a product and service package that includes GPS device installation, cloud infrastructure, data feeding/migration, and the complete setup and configuration of the fleet. This smart fleet responds accurately to the requirements stated by the customer.
The first solution
SeekWiz is sold as an end-to-end solution, which involves Sigmapeiron delivering the complete package to the customer with no overhead and/or hidden costs. The delivery also includes supporting transport personnel, training them and supporting end users (parents/employees) along with a periodic maintenance cycle.
The platform provides accurate live tracking, custom in-app notifications, real-time location updates, and data security. There also is the service of the SeekWiz Command Centre, a dedicated channel to address queries that can come from any entity associated with the customer (transport admin + end users). This command centre can be reached via various channel like the SeekWizDashboard.
By logging an incident and/or a service request, the same is directly reported to an internal self-designed ticketing system that caters to the incident/service request by following stringent same-day resolution criteria. The command centre can be approached via WhatsApp and there also is a hotline where customers can call for immediate incidents.
The model and growing need for tracking
SeekWiz uses the per-subscriber model, which Bhushan says is especially attractive to schools where the SeekWiz subscription is fixed for a long period and the school can account for the expense as part of the transport fees.
There also is a per-tracked-entity model, which Bhushan mentions is perfect for fleet owners who provide vehicles in large numbers to either schools or corporate organisations.
While the team claims to have seen a sales growth of 80 percent from the third quarter of 2016 to the year’s last quarter, location tracking services are fast growing. While SeekWiz and its parent company Sigmapeiron are Pune based, there are several across different parts of the country.
A report by WHO on road safety stated that the mortality rate of children is as high as 19 in 1,00,000. Looking at these alarming statistics, there are several GPS solutions and technology-based companies focused on school bus security like AppAlert, Opal Solutions, ATIC, and startups like Thiruvananthapuram-based TrackSchoolBus and Bengaluru-based Northstar and Purvathana.
Future plans
In terms of further growth, through SeekWiz, Sigmapeiron expects to maintain an estimated growth of 40 percent quarter to quarter on average for current sales engagements. Sigmapeiron is now working on leveraging technology to build a platform which would revolutionise remedial education to help parents and teachers better understand the wards and provide equal opportunity to all students to achieve much more.
They are also working on an IoT-based solution which shall cater to the common man. IoT-related home automation is still being sold as a luxury. “Our aim at Sigmapeiron is to convert this luxury into an affordable solution which is convenient, caters to daily needs, and is essentially a plug-and-play solution,” says Bhushan.