Intangles, a Pune-based fleet intelligence company, launched four AIS-140-certified device configurations for commercial vehicles on Monday, 2 November.
The range arrives after the Supreme Court ordered all States and Union Territories to strictly enforce the mandate for public service vehicles to use a verified vehicle location tracking device (VLTD) with emergency buttons. Without one, such a vehicle cannot get a fitness certificate or permit.
The requirement has applied to new public service vehicles since 2019, but the order came in May this year after the court noted that fewer than 1 percent of transport vehicles on Indian roads had a working AIS-140 or VLTD device. Central rules also cover goods carriers with national permits and N2 and N3 trucks carrying hazardous goods.
Chief executive Anup Patil told Autocar Professional that operators have so far run the compliance device, a telematics platform and an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system as separate tools, and that the number of systems an operator needs is now coming down.
AIS-140 specifies tracking and emergency alerts and does not require engine data, so a device fitted only to comply shows where a vehicle is, but reveals little about its condition, the company’s release said. Operators wanted more from the same hardware and put the request to Intangles as: “Can you guys do something where our cost will come down, and yet we can be regulatory compliant as well as have your tech?” Patil said.
The base tier, InCert, covers certified tracking, trip management and geofencing. The other three add fuel and driver behaviour reports, predictive vehicle health monitoring and, in InVision+, two-camera video telematics. Operators pay for the device and a subscription that includes a customisable API.
Large fleets raised a separate problem. They take on third-party vehicles for temporary loads and have little control over them, yet remain answerable for timely delivery. These operators want to know where such trucks are and want them “regulatory compliant and not get stopped in the middle of a road”, according to Patil. The company said it responded with one dashboard covering owned and hired vehicles.
Patil said AIS-140 also made integration possible, since fleet platforms now exchange data with Vahan for the first time, linking with operators’ own ERP systems. A driver’s assignment can sit in the ERP and the scorecard in Intangles, giving the operator one view of how each driver performs on each route.
Only location data goes to Vahan, which asks for it every 10 to 30 seconds, while CAN bus and sensor data stream to Intangles’ cloud at about 10 Hz.
Some operators are also writing their own dashboards using Intangles’ data with AI tools, Patil said, and one maintenance head has built a view of every vehicle inside his geofence, along with the issues on each.
Intangles has so far served operators with more than 20 vehicles, and the focus remains on commercial vehicles of three tonnes and above. With this launch, however, it wants to cater to every operator. Single-truck owners can order a device from its website for delivery in two to three working days, install it and generate a certificate to clear RTO checks, Patil said. An owner who needs only to comply can stay with the base device, he added. The company said the InCentral e-commerce platform handles compatibility checks, purchase and VLTD certificates.
To reach Tier 3 and Tier 4 towns, the company will rely on its partner network, which it has begun onboarding. Patil put wider adoption at three to four years at most.
Operators on the platform report efficiency gains of 13 to 15 percent, according to Patil. He expects the range to contribute about 10 percent of Intangles’ revenue in its first year. On a consolidated basis, however, the company is still “a bit negative”, he said, as it invests heavily in its overseas units.
Intangles operates in 18 countries and works with more than 40 OEM and enterprise partners. It said its platform supports over 41,000 fleet operators and more than 5 lakh vehicles.