Have you ever lost a vehicle? According to these statistics from The Star, 64% of you have, which means that you’ll be interested to hear about KATSANA, a GPS-based app geared to help curb these statistics.
Named for the Malay term “dekat sana” (it is there), KATSANA boasts a 95% rate of recovering lost cars. Not an inconsequential feat. It gives car owners the ability to locate vehicles anywhere they could be, which is crucial in retrieving a stolen car before it is dismantled for scraps.
KATSANA’s goal is to provide an inexpensive product to both install and maintain, which is good news for us average-joes who can’t afford other high-tier programs available on the market. It can also be installed easily without fundamentally changing the wiring in a vehicle, meaning even installation won’t cost too much, and maintenance can be done easily.
Sounds good right?
Well it’s been two years since we last checked up with and KATSANA has not stopped moving forward, now tackling bigger fish in their quest to become Malaysia’s solution to car theft from all angles.
Moving Into Tackling Businesses
KATSANA still stands firm on their core mission to reduce car theft, but they are frying bigger fish now by also using their GPS functionality as a fleet management system, both on land and on sea.
Introducing KATSANA Fleet and KATSANA Insight, now helping businesses bring their fleets to the 21st century. According to Syed Fuqaha the CEO, “We realised that there is a strong business need for enterprises to modernise their fleet, and improved our services in mid-2014 to offer enterprise-oriented solutions.”
Through their Insight programme, KATSANA utilises the GPS element of their services to also analyse big data. This means that the data curated allows fleet managers to quickly identify risky drivers and discover potential savings for their fleets, reduction of dangerous behaviors, improving drivers KPIs, lowering fuel usage and better monitoring of maintenance schedules.
The purpose of KATSANA Insight is also to bring usage-based insurance and pay-as-how-you-drive model into the ASEAN shore. The insurance industry is gearing up for a full detariffication environment by 2019, which means insurers will have more freedom in pricing motor insurance premiums.
They can price it cheaply to attract more customers (at the risk of losing more due to claims), or price it higher to combat claim loss (and risk getting less customers). Insurers themselves are still learning the curve of bringing technology into the equation, but the team will persevere and hopeful to deploy a solution soon with an insurance partner.
They seem to have hit a goldmine with this idea, as currently 95% of vehicles tracked by KATSANA belong to fleets.
As a young startup it did take a lot of convincing to get big businesses to trust in KATSANA, but they are happy to report that once a couple of the big corporations came on board, others followed suit. The team’s efforts goes to show that the power of influence goes a long way.
What About The Average Consumer?
Of course KATSANA has not forgotten its roots. The point of the product is to curb vehicle theft and KATSANA still works towards this. However when it comes to appealing to consumers en-masse, the team notices a grave importance in product availability and supply chains.
This is why the team has placed their trust in their channel partners where KATSANA is essentially a technology principal for the partners to emulate. This way, KATSANA is less B2C (Business-to-Consumer) and more B2B2C (Business-to-Business-to-Consumer).
Some channel partners working with KATSANA currently include HeiTech, provider of Network and Data Centre Services to complement the System Integration and Application Development work, Altel Communications Sdn Bhd, aspiring LTE 4G provider and lastly Technology Park Malaysia, which has partnered more than 3,000 tech innovation companies.
So when all of this is said and done, one question stands: Does KATSANA work? Well in their 2.5 years of business, KATSANA has seen 58 missing/stolen vehicles and recovered 57 of them. That is the highest percentage of successful recoveries of stolen vehicles in Malaysia and the industry, showing that KATSANA is both cost-effective and useful. All of this translates to around RM6–7million in savings for motor insurance companies.
Even people who don’t own cars can benefit from this product through KATSANA Shuttle, with a mission to provide Malaysia with a world-class public transportation infrastructure.
This service will enable commuters to have the most up-to-date location and scheduling information of their ride. The app is available on both PC and Mobile, with additional information on available bus stops, route information and estimated time of arrival. Movement of buses are tracked every 5 seconds and viewable on a public tracking page.
KATSANA will not stop here. They are actively pushing to have their GPS solutions pre-installed by car manufacturers. Their dream might be quite challenging as it would require a long R&D period to ensure automotive compliance, not to mention planning from the earliest stage of vehicle development.
If all goes well for the team, pretty soon we might not even remember a time without KATSANA in the car.