Can LocoNav Become India's Answer to IoT Unicorn Samsara?
LocoNav’s harnesses IoT technology to offer fleet owners and drivers a single platform for telematics, driver management, fleet compliance and more
Fifteen months after the pandemic threatened to wipe out business value and growth everywhere, things are seemingly coming back on track. One of the major indicators of this is the Google ‘Community Mobility Report’, which aims to provide insights into how movement of people, fleets of cars and other transport has changed.
After a huge drop in April and May, visits to nearly every place of interest have grown, including visits to workplaces and more — indicating just how quickly things have revived from June, after the second wave in India. Even though the overall movement is well under the baseline, things are rapidly changing and movement of people and vehicles will once again pick up pace, the data indicates. Capitalising on this revival at an early stage will be critical and fleet management tech startup LocoNav is looking to do just that with its $37 Mn Series B round, announced today (June 29).
With fresh funding from Quiet Capital, Anthemis Group, Sequoia Capital India, Foundamental, RIT Capital Partners, Uncorrelated Ventures, Village Global and other leading investors, LocoNav is aiming to become India’s answer to cloud-connected IoT platform Samsara, and put India’s name on the map when it comes to fleet management and IoT tech.
With a valuation of over $5.4 Bn, Samsara has become something of a rockstar in this domain, being led by cofounder and CEO Sanjit Biswas, who had previously founded Meraki, which was acquired by Cisco way back in 2012 for $1.2 Bn.
The San Francisco-based unicorn reported an $300 Mn in run-rate subscription revenue in just five years, with more than 80% annual growth in 2020-21. The company works with some of the biggest players in the market such as Uber, Ford, Volvo as well as a number of local governments. And that’s the target audience that LocoNav is going after, according to cofounder Vidit Jain. “Anyone who runs a vehicle or fleet for a commercial purpose is our target customer. This could be any kind of fleet — from trucks to cabs and even tractors and infrastructure vehicle equipment,” he added.