Affordable smart car tech is mission possible for this team of entrepreneurs
Four Indians have developed a plug-and-play device for cars and bikes that can communicate with the driver, send alerts in case of accidents and analyse the performance of the vehicle
Do we have the kind of vehicles that fit into the modern scheme of things? Sadly more than 95 per cent vehicles plying on the Indian streets don’t have a smart system to send out alerts in case of accidents.
“Our cars are the most expensive technology device we buy. And yet, it is one of the least smart compared to the rest of our gadgets,” said Rohan Vadgaonkar, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur.
“There are some very basic areas where a connected car/bike is not a luxury but a necessity — to automatically call for help in case of an accident or to alert you if someone is vandalising it. Unfortunately there is none,” he added.
Vadgaonkar, a huge car lover, teamed up with four of his IIT Bombay batch mates to build a plug-and-play device that can make old cars and bikes smart and intuitive. And they founded a startup Carnot Technologies in Mumbai to work on the device.
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“Carnot is an IoT-based on-board diagnostics (OBD) dongle that can do three things: security (alerts you in case of safety or security issue with your vehicle), health (gives you a detailed insight on the health of your vehicle and alert you if anything is going wrong), and performance analytics (like a fitbit for your car/bike it tracks all your trips and gives you analytics to improve mileage and driving efficiency),” Vadgaonkar explained.
A bike variant of the product is under development which has a community feature to interact with other bikers, compare scores and biking stats within friend circle, and plot them on a map in real-time during a ride, he said.
The founders had earlier worked in varied fields like management consulting, Big Data, and oil rig electronics after completing BTech four years ago. Back on the campus itself, the foursome used to lead a team called IITBRacing, where they designed and manufactured two electric race cars that would go from 0 to 100 kms in less than four seconds. They also got a chance to race their country-made sports car at the Silverstone Racetrack in the UK as part of the Formula Student event.
“We just love cars,” Vadgaonkar said while sharing the story that led to the launch of Carnot. “We are super passionate about cars and in the past have built two electric cars and one internal combustion engine car. Even back then, we had developed a telematics system to monitor the performance of the cars.”
Vadgaonkar find it surprising why, despite so much development in consumer technology, our cars have lagged behind. Cars still communicate with us using confusing red lights and sounds and they don’t alarm us if something goes wrong with them. “We just felt that it was about time our cars could connect to us more intuitively and we decided to build it ourselves,” he narrated the story to e27.
During the development stage, the foursome used to talk to potential users. Most users they pitched to wanted to know when Carnot would come up with a bike variant of the device. “We realised that bike is an equally important and large space that we need to build a product for. That’s why we entered the QDIC event pitching Carnot RideSmart,” he added.
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The product is compatible with all cars and bikes, old and new. As for cars, it is a plug-and-play device. The bike variant can be installed with a few minor alterations within a few minutes.
The car variant is priced at INR 6,000 (under US$90) that includes free subscription for the data plan for a year. The bike variant is still under development, which will be available at INR 2,500-3,000 (US$37-US$45) once commercially launched.
Individual users are what Carnot is catering to at the moment, but a partnership with OEMs is also in the cards.
“We’ve seen some great traction. Our beta launch was oversubscribed and we actually got hundreds of paid users to try out Carnot and give us feedback. Additionally, we just signed an agreement with one of the largest motor insurance companies to sell Carnot to their customer base and provide them with analytics (not personal) to build better models for risk and insurance pricing,” he explained.
While connected car technology has become ubiquitous, it is still in the early stages in India. Recently, Kochi-based Ridelogic also came up with a similar solution.
“Ridelogic is building a product for the high end-bikes based on the technical choice of working on an OBD port. Only about 15 per cent of the bikes in India have OBD. In contrast, Carnot is compatible with all kinds of bikes. Also, we are more focused on the security of the bike and rider for which we have a SIM card and GPRS engine to communicate directly with the network, irrespective of whether a rider’s phone is present, so that we can trigger accident alerts and track the bike remotely,” he elaborated.
Vadgaonkar admits that there are very few consumer hardware products from India and hardly any that deliver an experience that can compete with the best in Silicon Valley. “In the near future, we aim to make our app a go-to platform for anything related to cars/bikes. You could book your insurance and servicing through the app or any service related to the vehicle like car wash etc. Additionally, we are already seeing strong interest from different ecosystem players for the data analytics solutions on the data we generate,” he concluded.
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