Falcon-i to keep an eagle eye on vehicles

American Megatrends India Pvt Ltd (AMI), a Chennai-based company, is keen to capitalise on the interest and demand shown by fleet operators and OEMs for its GSM-based vehicle tracking system called Falcon-i.

According to Jayaram Krishnan, director and chief executive officer, American Megatrends India, several OEMs have evinced keeness about the product and added that “we are ready to step up to the increase in demand.”

“We are also in talks with fleet operators – big and small with regard to the product, which would be of great help in keeping track of vehicles.” AMI’s focus is on growing its retail business. Jayaram Krishnan claimed that Falcon-i is an advanced method of remote vehicle tracking and monitoring. Each vehicle is equipped with a GSM gadget that receives signals from the mobile service provider's base station. The embedded application in the gadget determines the position of the gadget.

This data can be stored or can be directly transmitted to an operating centre along with the time stamp in a user-defined interval. The past year has seen a few thousand Falcon-i units being sold and the AMI CEO is confident that demand will grow.

Advanced monitoring

According to Krishnan Jayaram, this vehicle tracking solution enables fleet owners to be fully aware of the specific movement of their vehicles and goods on a real-time basis. What's more, vehicle idling time can also be reduced. Falcon-i helps the vehicle owner to plan ahead, work on schedules and ensure better service to customers. An advanced system monitors the details of the vehicle such as its speed, fuel, temperature of the refrigerating unit in the truck etc even from a remote place.

In Jayaram's opinion, this system is a low-cost solution for truck owners. The system operates on the GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) technology and sends out automatic location data through an SMS (Short Messaging Service) along highways at pre-determined intervals. The SMS signals, on a mobile network, are decoded and made available on a website for the fleet owner or the logistics service provider.

“We have seen tremendous interest from taxi and bus operators, road transport corporations, police and container operators,” said Jayaram. AMI’s other product i-SENSE will be launched in 4-6 months, he said. It will record and monitor parameters such as temperature and liquidity and alarm systems. It would be useful for fleet owners who carry perishable products. Unlike offline data readers, i-SENSE will do this job online and all the data will be sent to a central server and updated instantly.

Installation of Falcon-i is easy, said Jayaram. The product has been designed in-house by AMI engineers and can be tailored to suit different types of users.

In his opinion, BPOs and ITES companies which hire vehicles to transport personnel have evinced interest in the Falcon-i.

Meanwhile, there is some customer demand for the gadget to be voice-enabled, said Jayaram. This may result in a cost increase over the basic Falcon-i unit due to the additional features and sensors.

With demand for its vehicle tracking products set to increase, AMI is equipped to ramp up production to 50,000 units a year. “Several car manufacturers have also approached us and we are in talks with them about Falcon-i,” he said.

Around 80 per cent of AMI’s vehicle tracking systems are aimed for the domestic market while the rest is exported, Jayaram said and added that exports are to the Middle East and Europe.

Currently, about 70 per cent of AMI’s revenues come from selling its popular BIOS and motherboards to original equipment manufacturers. Storage solutions and retail products like the tracking devices contribute about 30 per cent. “We expect to increase the share of revenues from the retail segment in future,” he said.

Clearly, this is yet another company all set to ride the boom in vehicle tracking equipment.