Every so often, investment opportunities come along that do a great job of challenging all of your existing investment assumptions and the ways that you think about things. Sometimes you can attribute this to the fierce passion of the team that comes through during the initial conversations you have. Sometimes it is down to the idea itself, the opportunity ahead and the incredible execution so far. Sometimes, as is the case when I think about our investment in LocoNav, I’m reminded that it can be all of this together, and more.

Introducing LocoNav

LocoNav provides a telematics-based fleet management platform designed to serve commercial fleet managers in emerging markets. Historically, fleet operators in emerging markets have lacked modern software solutions and had to rely on multiple vendors to acquire essential products and services to run and manage their businesses. This has caused inefficiencies and elevated costs in an industry where offerings are so fragmented.

LocoNav was founded to deliver a single platform to help fleet managers to run and manage their operations with ease. From offering a telematics-driven tracking ecosystem, providing hassle-free commercial vehicle loans and insurance coverage, procuring commercial fleet supplies, to connecting customers with skilled and verified drivers, the platform works as a one-stop solution to cater to all commercial fleet needs.

Through its software ecosystem and data-enabled marketplace, LocoNav is able to drive significant value to fleet managers. Their software ecosystem allows them to improve security and operations and leverage data to improve pricing, while their data-enabled marketplace allows them to minimise the complexity and costs of building, maintaining, and scaling their own infrastructure.

A market-leading solution

Since 2016, LocoNav has become the market leader in fleet software in India, has been ranked the #1 fleet tech app and is among the top 50 business apps on Google Play Store in India. LocoNav was the first company to offer a SaaS-enabled marketplace experience to fleet owners, leveraging data to bring pricing benefits to their customers in India.

With this fundraising, LocoNav is accelerating its entry to a wide range of emerging markets and will be present in many more countries by the end of this year. They are poised to become the world’s largest network of connected commercial vehicles in the coming years.

LocoNav is an excellent example of how we believe that many financial services will be delivered in the future: personalised, in context and as an important foundational element of other critical products or services. The fleet management industry has ignored some of the largest opportunities out there…

We believe that LocoNav is delivering needed solutions to meet as-yet unmet customer needs. We’re very much looking forward to working with LocoNav’s co-founders, Shridhar and Vidit, as well as fellow investors Quiet Capital and Sequoia India. Exciting times ahead!