KATSANA, a GPS-based app that deals with fleet management and recovering lost cars just announced today that they’ve secured RM4 mil in funding from Axiata Digital Innovation Fund (ADIF).
Their core mission has always been to reduce car theft and make roads safer in Malaysia, but their GPS functionality is now mostly utilised as a fleet management system, both on land and on sea.
According to the team, the fund will be used to support the development and commercialisation of their current telematics business and KATSANA Insight, which deals with driver behavioral analytics. KATSANA will also be focusing on scaling up their product development team with the infusion of finances.
The co-founder of KATSANA Syed Fuqaha said of the funding in a press release, “This has come at a pivotal time when KATSANA is gearing up towards the rolling-out of our KATSANA Insight solution for the insurance industry. Since the inception of KATSANA in 2014, we’ve realised that behaviour insights have been our most valuable asset.
Our real-life experience in dealing with major enterprise fleets has allowed us to develop precise algorithms to understand driver behaviour which is directly beneficial for motor insurers. This development is very much driven by our mission to become a catalyst for safer roads in Malaysia through KATSANA’s engagement and gamification engine.”
We contacted Syed Fuqaha to find out a little bit more about how they’ll be utilising the funding and he told Vulcan Post that the biggest portion of the investment will be used to deploy KATSANA Insight for private and commercial vehicles.
He said, “We hope to have the largest set of driver behaviour patterns in South East Asia and that would require quite a massive number of active vehicles on the road. As it is right now, we have already gathered over 140 million kilometers of vehicle travel data and we hope to collect and analyse more than 1 billion kilometers of collected data when Phase 1 deployment for motor insurers is completed.”
He also explained to us that the decision to raise for KATSANA Insight was made when they realised that some of the features that were developed as part of their enterprise telematics product were actually fitting for motor insurers. The features are essentially a collection of algorithms and techniques to analyse driving patterns and score the drivers based on actual risks.
Describing the process of acquiring the funding, he said, “We officially met 4 strategic investors over the course of 6 months since early 2016. It was challenging to convince them especially when detariffication was not yet certain and motor insurance is known to be a tightly regulated industry.
In retrospect we could have met more investors, but as we also run a growing telematics product for the enterprise market, we need to be careful not to disrupt existing operation while looking for funds.”
There were other opportunities open to KATSANA but Syed Fuqaha explained, “We have also received several acquisition offers, but they have to be declined because KATSANA is still young and there are many exciting plans in the pipeline.”
Amin Shafie, partner of Intres Capital, fund manager of ADIF added, “We were impressed with team at KATSANA and how they have evolved from the vehicle security business into an IoT and big data driven services for the emerging Fintech and InsuranceTech industries.
ADIF believes that with this partnership, we are able to accelerate KATSANA’s growth regionally and promote safe driving and safer roads as we go along. We look forward to be part of this journey.”
Congratulations to the KATSANA team!
Feature Image Credit: KATSANA
