Founded in 2018, Zeliot is a new age deep tech company that is all set to transform the mobility ecosystem to its better version. And since then, they have set a benchmark in the vehicle telematics industry. Their vision is crystal clear about offering IoT platform-based solutions to enterprises and automotive OEMs.
Today, the telematics market is extremely crowded and choosing the right mobility telematics solution providers becomes a hard nut to crack. They usually get trapped by the bait of cheaper vehicle telematics solutions and compromise on the quality. But being a pinchpenny can actually add on to their future expenses. Here is where they need a reliable solution. Zeliot is taking up the charge.
Since 2018, Zeliot has successfully developed a platform that has hosted over 1,00,000 devices and they are still counting. Their core belief isn’t just offering a fundamental software platform to customers but a transparent mobility ecosystem. Anup, one of the co-founders of Zeliot, gave more clarity to their vision by adding, “We are productizing each component of the software platform, some of the components are Telematics Hub, Data Engineering pipelines and many others, over the course of time. Along with this, we are creating a data computation package for the Telematics device. This package will eventually run on the edge by allowing us to control a lot of data parameters before sending it to the cloud. The combination of platform products and the edge package will bring in a lot more efficiency in the way IoT data, especially telematics data is handled. This will lead to huge amounts of savings for our partners or customers in terms of cloud expenses.” Currently, Zeliot is in the good books of many large enterprises and Automotive manufacturers (OEM). Undeniably, Zeliot has already taken a step forward in upgrading the existing mobility ecosystem to the next level.
An Evolution to The Existing Ecosystem
Data privacy has always been a challenge in the automotive telematics industry. And that’s why telematics hasn’t unlocked the doors of the mainstream automobile market yet. For combating this challenge, Zeliot is striving hard to make the automobile OEMs reimagine a world of smart telematics that’s more secure and reliable.
They are focusing on creating an ecosystem for the customers by allowing more control over how they would want to adopt the technology. This can be achieved by reimagining how the software platform components can be monetized. Consequently, all this will eventually allow Zeliot’s customers to have more control over data as well as solutions.
Clarifying this idea further, Anup added, “ We don’t want to talk just about solutions. In our domain, the solution is usually specific to the customers. Most of the time, Auto OEMs or even large enterprises can’t really make sense of what’s readily available. Hence, it’s always viable to let the customers make changes manually. This will even allow the customers to build something proprietary on top of the solution that we will deliver. Vehicle Telematics solutions aren’t new to the ecosystem. A lot of brands are available in the market with pre-made solutions. But are these solutions secure? How would you know whether your data is encrypted and doesn’t go to the third-party platform? We understand all the issues that people face while processing this data. Thus, we have divided the platform and the solutions. However, we will make sure to deploy the platform on our partner’s cloud subscription model where data isn’t routed through us. This will further avoid the misuse of data.”
The data experts at Zeliot understand the fact that every customer has different use cases for the same platform and solutions. Thus, they give space to customers for picking and choosing suitable solutions and manage services modularly in a cost-effective way. Elaborating this further, team Zeliot requests the customers to deploy the software platform components through cloud marketplaces by ensuring that the data directly hits their own cloud subscription. It’s possible with over 450+ APIs on offer and the entire solution framework, including the readily- available frontend web and mobile applications. Additionally, customers can seamlessly build their custom proprietary logic. These APIs cover a wide range of functionality where the users get access to every parameter, be it simple or complex. Indeed, Zeliot’s entire business logic revolves around a microservices architecture where they are going to be strong backend
platform players.
As Key Platform Players
The entire framework of Zeliot’s Connected Mobility Platform (CMP) focuses on handling a huge amount of telematics data at a high frequency efficiently. Thus, it allows users in the effortless onboarding of new Telematics Hardware that already supports 1000+ tracking devices. Besides that, it gives an option to apply real-time custom rules to the extracted data.
For instance, users can get instant insights into vehicle health, fuel consumption pattern, and much more. Thanks to the highly advanced Data Engineering Pipelines of this CMP! One good thing about this process is the securely-hosted data on the cloud under a customer’s subscription model. OEMs and Enterprises can individually develop a plethora of solutions on top of the CMP.
Solutions for OEMs:
- End of Line (EOL) Applications: Users can digitally store and maintain logs from the vehicle before it rolls off the production line by performing a quality check on the vehicles.
- Vehicle Lifecycle Management Applications: This solution will let OEMs remotely service a vehicle, read or clear Diagnostic Trouble Codes (DTCs) by updating the firmware on the ECUs. They can even schedule a campaign for it. Moreover, it will massively reduce the vehicle callback cost and service time for OEMs, ensuring customer delight. Additionally, OEMs, Third-party Road Side Assistance Networks (RSA) or the nearest Emergency Services center will get instant reports via CMP’s secure APIs in case of a vehicle breakdown or accident. As a result, it will save their crucial time by automating the Emergency Response System (ERS) dispatch to the customer.
- Mechanic Applications: Through these apps, the mechanics will be able to effectively service the vehicle via smart features viz., Vehicle Health Card, Clutching / braking patterns, Vehicle Drive Terrain analysis, DTC history, etc. Indeed, it will provide OEMs with in-depth insights into the state of the vehicle during periodic maintenance and services.
- End Customer Applications: It will allow OEMs to enable smart connectivity features for end customers while improving their engagement and delight. Besides that, OEMs can use these apps to upsell other services to the customer, make exciting announcements, reward customers for safe driving via gamification, and much more.
Thus, it will contribute to promoting road safety. In a broader scenario, the benefits of safe driving will offer tangible returns to customers. For example, reduction on insurance premiums, better financing options, better resale value, discounts on vehicle servicing, etc.
Solutions for Enterprises:
- Fleet Management Solutions: Businesses will have access to real-time insights into the fleet’s location and performance. For instance, average fleet utilization, fleet downtime, cost of managing the fleet, fleet health card, etc. Fleet management solutions coupled with driver apps will enable more use cases, including, driver job scheduler, driver attendance with access control to the vehicle, driver expense management system for facilitating smooth and transparent transactions to the driver on the job, and much more.
- Smart City Applications: Zeliot’s CMP is an ideal platform for unifying all the components of a smart city to develop applications on top of it. These components include GPS and electronic ticketing solutions for intercity and intracity buses, electric or manual last-mile connectivity options, smart traffic signals. Furthermore, users will get benefits of GPS enabled ambulances and other emergency vehicles, smart cameras for detecting traffic law violations, etc. With these integrated components into the CMP, users can efficiently ingest and analyze data to enable Command and Control Centers for various departments of a smart city.
- People Transport: It will allow a smart and safe commute to the users by solving key problems related to road congestions and traffic wait time. A few of the advantages include Urban mobility solutions, Employee and Student Transport solutions, etc.
Many pioneer brands are partnering with Zeliot on this mission of enhancing the mobility ecosystem. Bosch is one of them.
A Partnership With Bosch
Recently, Bosch picked up 14% of Zeliot’s as a big step towards a positive change in the current mobility ecosystem. This investment by Bosch India’s mobility team is a significant validation for encouraging Zeliot’s vision. Bosch is amongst the pioneer brands in the vehicle ecosystem with over 18 manufacturing sites and 7 development and application centers operational in India.
Today, almost every vehicle manufacturer uses at least one component with Bosch’s labelling while assembling their final product. Smart mobility solutions will be the next mammoth step in the automotive domain. Bosch aims to be the leading driver of these smart mobility solutions, globally.
Over the past decade, Bosch has invested more than INR 8000 crores on various innovative ideas aligned with the “Make In India” scheme. Now, their next target is to build an Atma Nirbhar Bharat by investing over INR 1000 crores for the localization of advanced automotive technologies in the upcoming five years. They will contribute an additional investment of INR 1000 crores for expanding digital platforms, including the mobility marketplace and mobility
cloud platform.
Fortunately, Zeliot is also a part of Bosch’s journey towards a better mobility landscape. This investment will enable Zeliot and Bosch to improve customer experiences with connected mobility solutions. There are a few evident synergies between the companies that are undeniably going to elevate Zeliot to the next level, including:
• Integration of microservices for transacting digital assets
• Partnerships in strategic modules on mobility specific SaaS portfolio
All in all, the core aim of this partnership is to create a mobility ecosystem that allows partners more control and solutions.
Summing it up
Change is always going to remain a constant in the vehicle telematics industry. And visionary automotive brands will appreciate it. Zeliot is already creating a revolution in the mobility ecosystem by bringing this change. Their affordable cloud subscription model that’s more secure and reliable is making it possible. With this revolutionary mobility ecosystem, telematics solutions will be a win-win situation for both OEMs and their end customers. Pioneers like Bosch have joined hands with Zeliot towards a strong mobility platform solution by picking up 14% of their stakes. But it’s just a beginning, there are still more milestones to achieve.
Author:
Anup Naik
Co-Founder & Director
Zeliot Connected Services
Anup Naik, aged 30 is a co-founder and director of Zeliot. He come from a technology background with an experience of 8+ years and has an engineering degree in CSE. He provides the business roadmap and formulates the vision for the company and is instrumental in achieving the roadmap with a team of 45+ members.
Published in Telematics Wire
