Karooooo Ltd. provides smart transportation management and analytics. The company has expertise and enhanced its business in various areas, such as developing new software applications, such as fleet management, mobile asset accounting, workforce management and insurance solutions; developing capabilities in data management at scale, as well as a broad range of communication technologies and protocols; expanding its sales and marketing focus to include commercial fleets of all sizes; and expandi...
Karooooo Ltd. provides smart transportation management and analytics. The company has expertise and enhanced its business in various areas, such as developing new software applications, such as fleet management, mobile asset accounting, workforce management and insurance solutions; developing capabilities in data management at scale, as well as a broad range of communication technologies and protocols; expanding its sales and marketing focus to include commercial fleets of all sizes; and expanding its geographic footprint to meet the needs of its customers who are increasingly global with larger, more complex fleets and requirements.
The company’s single user interface and fully integrated cloud-based platform agnostically runs on a multitude of leading IoT devices, including internally developed cutting-edge devices, direct integrations to OEM devices and strategically smart IoT devices from third-parties and customer pre-owned devices. This enables the company to deliver a unified and comprehensive service to its customers. The company’s discreet, sophisticated smart devices stream data to the platform, facilitating informed decisions about optimal asset efficiency and productivity, including live tracking and location of assets. The company’s devices can be installed in a range of mobile assets independent of asset procurement, allowing its customers to integrate its solutions in existing or new vehicles. The company’s platform includes a wide range of reliable services to effectively serve the needs of a geographically diverse range of clients. Where appropriate, partnerships with third party technology providers are established to create incremental value to customers in the markets the company serves.
As part of a limited strategy to distribute the company’s SaaS platform through independent business owners, its solutions are sold through independent licensees in Botswana, Malawi, Rwanda, Eswatini and Zimbabwe, who enter into franchise agreements and has exclusive geographic licenses to market and sell its solutions in exchange for royalty payments. Revenue generated by licensees was 0.1% of the company’s total revenue for the year ended February 29, 2024.
Cartrack is a global provider of leading real-time mobility data analytics solutions for smart transportation. The company offers a full-stack smart mobility SaaS platform for connected vehicles and other assets and provides customers with differentiated insights and analytics to optimize their business operations and workforce, increase efficiency and decrease costs, improve safety, monitor environmental impact, assist with regulatory compliance and manage risk.
The company’s business is vertically integrated, which affords it complete autonomy with regards to the development of the capabilities and features that differentiate its applications as well as the speed of its innovation. Since the company owns and controls almost every aspect of its most advanced smart device design, platform innovation and software application development, client acquisition and onboarding, customer service and the management of its back-end support, it is able to move quickly without any significant third-party dependencies and inefficiencies.
The company serves customers in 25 countries across five continents, supporting more than 1.97 million subscribers as of February 29, 2024 and its highly scalable platform serves large multinational enterprises and individual consumers alike, enabling it to address a large, growing and underpenetrated global market. The company collects an average of over 170 billion data points per month and have maintained a consistent platform uptime of 99.9%.
The company’s proprietary SaaS platform acts as a central nervous system for connected vehicles and other mobile assets, such as construction equipment, generators, refrigeration units, trailers and boats. The company’s platform collects, processes, and analyzes data via two-way communication with its proprietary hardware technology or third-party devices in each vehicle or other asset, providing its users with visibility into their fleets from a single, user friendly interface with reporting and tracking capabilities that deliver actionable insights in real-time. The company’s intuitive web-based applications provide a comprehensive set of software features for managing fleets and related workforces without the need for customers to incur upfront information technology costs and include advanced functionality, such as real-time high speed video streaming.
The company provides customers with the flexibility to deploy its solutions across a range of vehicles, including electric vehicles, and other assets and to use its platform alone or in conjunction with the systems of OEM’s and other third parties. The company is committed to the continued enhancement of its customer experience and retention by driving innovation in the platform, adding functionality, new software features and integration with OEM solutions. The company empowers its customers, which range from consumers to large enterprise fleets, with actionable intelligence to enhance profitability, better serve their customers, and strengthen safety and security. The company defines customers at the enterprise or consumer level and subscribers as each vehicle or asset it services.
Growth Strategy
The company is enhancing its SaaS platform to be device and service provider agnostic as it further develops smart mobility capabilities, partnering with the world’s leading companies in pay-as-a-service transportation. Increasing global access to these devices will further drive demand for the company’s solutions and services. The company’s platform is complementary to OEM and third-party telematics systems and it conducts aftermarket installations in collaboration with OEMs. The company’s customers are increasingly reliant on its SaaS platform to optimize business intelligence relating to both assets and people on a global scale. The company is capitalizing on opportunities to provide scalable, customer-centric solutions that rapidly deliver value to enterprise customers and consumers alike. The company continues to expand its platform to address its customers’ most critical business priorities. R&D investments allow the company to meet growing expectations from customers for deeper insights quickly.
The key elements of the company’s strategy are to increase subscription sales to existing customers; expand its customer base; expand its geographic presence worldwide; and expand its consumer platform and services.
SaaS Cloud Platform
The company’s single platform offers a range of scalable mobile asset management and workforce optimization applications to address the needs of its diverse customer segments. The company offers a comprehensive set of software features for data analysis, mobile asset tracking, and oversight for managers to protect, connect, and report on every asset in a fleet.
The company’s platform is accessible to users via web interface and mobile applications, with services offered via monthly subscription. The company’s applications are highly integrated to avoid the need for multiple interfaces, and include free application programming interface (API) integrations with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
The principal components of the company’s SaaS platform include the following:
Commercial Applications
Fleet Telematics: The comprehensive Fleet Management SaaS Platform provides customers with real-time insight into their asset base through live tracking on a roadmap interface; using proprietary smart IoT devices that allow for powerful vehicle integration and the use of peripheral sensors all geared towards delivering:
Real-time, accurate GPS positioning enabling location management, fuel management and fraud detection, maintenance management, eco-driving, vehicle utilization, time and attendance, and cold chain management;
Integration of real-time data into back-office systems;
Detailed driver management with advanced scorecards to manage the risk and performance of drivers; and
Real-time alerts for maintenance and engine diagnostics.
LiveVision enables comprehensive pro-active risk management and fleet visibility via an AI enabled two-camera video telematics system or a four-camera live streaming vehicle video system:
The AI enabled camera delivers live warnings to proactively mitigate the risk of driver fatigue, driver distraction and collisions and includes the monitoring of safe driving distances;
Live on-board cameras enable video selection, replay, and analysis, enabling driver coaching and performance improvement; and
Increased driver visibility reduces extraneous driving costs, reduces driver liability, increases driver safety, and further empowers fleet control.
MiFleet Advanced Fleet Administration and Business Intelligence (BI) provides cost management and administration capabilities:
Provides insight into all asset-related costs, such as purchasing, fuel, fines and insurance for each asset in a fleet; and
Provides actionable intelligence for driver optimization through powerful BI.
Karooooo Logistics provides a software application enabling the management of last mile delivery and general operational logistics. This technology addresses the challenges of on-the-ground distribution for large enterprises requiring systems integrations, payment gateways, third-party long-haul services and crowd-sourced drivers in order to scale and meet their operational needs.
Trace and locate drivers and mobile assets in real-time.
Drive powerful and highly controlled workflows, for example, stock control, invoicing, electronic proof-of-delivery, and mobile workforce management.
Up-to-date destinations and navigation integration, allowing drivers to spend more time focusing on job completion rather than finding a destination.
Quick communication to drivers via synchronized task list and built-in messaging systems.
Cartrack Field Service provides a software application enabling the management of field and or on site workers.
Trace and locate field workers and mobile assets in real-time.
Manage workflows, for example, stock control, invoicing, electronic proof-of-job-completion.
Up-to-date destinations and navigation integration, allowing workforce to spend more time focusing on job completion rather than finding a destination.
Quick communication to field workers via synchronized task list and built-in messaging systems.
Business Intelligence offers users a high-level view of fleet statistics, including analysis of key indicators and granular detail of asset-specific data.
Asset Tracking provides a way to track and trace moveable assets to reduce losses, automate inventory management, and improve workforce efficiency, equipment utilization, and regulatory compliance.
Asset Recovery: The company’s SVR and asset recovery services assist vehicle owners and insurance companies with the recovery of vehicles and other assets that have been, or have been alleged to have been, stolen. This service includes around-the-clock assistance with real-time tracking, dedicated technical teams, early warning alert systems, ground and air recovery teams dedicated exclusively to Cartrack operating under local law licenses, specialized technologies for both GSM and radio frequency and repatriation assistance across international borders. The company’s recovery success rate is considered by management to be achieved through the high reliability standards of its SaaS Platform, its smart in-vehicle devices, specialized installation techniques, miniaturization, and a dedicated team of rapid response recovery agents.
Insurance Telematics allows insurers to tailor premiums for commercial and consumer customers using analytics the company’s platform provides. This data also can be used to better reconstruct accident scenes, making it more efficient to evaluate claims and resulting in lower premiums.
Consumer Applications
Protector is an all-encompassing safety package for all consumer vehicles. Following the installation of the Cartrack telematics device, consumers can access a diverse set of software features and benefits, including:
a mobile application for real time movement management and communication;
Asset Recovery;
Ambulance Assist (facilitating emergency medical outreach and response);
Crash Alert;
a Limited Asset Recovery Warranty pay out in the unlikely event of the vehicle not being recovered;
a power event notification provides alerts upon vehicle battery disconnect;
an ignition sensor remotely reads ignition status and detects improper use; and
Crash Alert is a 24/7 monitoring system, which immediately triggers a dispatch for emergency services in response to a detected collision or accident.
Car Watch is a mobile application that lets users track and watch their vehicles from a distance. It includes alert notifications and the ability to sound an alarm remotely after unauthorized movements.
Insurance Telematics allows insurers to tailor premiums for commercial and consumer customers using analytics the ocmpany’s platform provides. This data also can be used to better reconstruct accident scenes, making it more efficient to evaluate claims and drive behavioral change resulting in safer drivers, reduced risk and lower premiums.
Specialist Mobility Solutions
Bike Track offers a GPS-based solution providing a comprehensive set of fleet management software features for commercial motorbike fleets. It includes a unique power management system.
Credit Management predicts payment cycles and facilitate active credit management for asset-based vehicle finance, including accident reconstruction and driver behavior reporting for maintenance services and fraud detection. Real-time alarms and alerts are used to protect and secure assets.
Electronic Monitoring: In Singapore, the company provides an end-to-end electronic monitoring services (EMS) application that allows law enforcement agencies to monitor persons of interest, such as offenders on extended supervision, parole, home detention, or community detention, including released prisoners in halfway care or who are in the process of being reintegrated into society.
Next-Generation Mobility Solutions
The company is constantly innovating to offer a range of additional mobility and monitoring solutions in select markets:
Carzuka, the company’s vehicle buying and selling marketplace, has been integrated into Cartrack’s broader operations to harness the many components that had been built and developed within Carzuka’s platform to benefit and add value to the existing Cartrack fleet platform. This follows a strategic decision to cease buying second hand vehicles in South Africa.
Cartrack Insurance Agency: The company’s insurtech multi-quote or aggregator platform offering customers the ability to obtain a fast online quote from a panel of independent insurers at competitive rates or if they choose, they can talk to a qualified consultant to advise on the appropriate insurance at the right price;
Smart IoT
Customers deploy the company’s smart devices to collect real-time data from their vehicles and transmit this information to secure data centers for processing which it manages via the Cartrack Private Cloud. The company’s platform components are designed to operate using a diverse array of communication technologies, including radio, satellite, and network protocols, such as Sigfox and LoRa. The company generally designs, develops and manufactures its devices and firmware in order to ensure their modularity and interoperability with its core subscription offering. The company offers customers the option of a SaaS-based subscription model with no up-front payment, reducing the capital investment required to access its solutions.
The company’s solutions are both flexible and relevant across all industries and fleet sizes, and has the capability to track other types of assets. The company’s technology has proven to be scalable, with many use cases and subscribers in many countries. This has given the company large amounts of data, which it has in turn learned to process quickly and reliably. As it continues to grow, the company plans to leverage its data by integrating data science and AI more deeply into its platform. In a system that can watch fleets and drivers for its customers, operators can spend more time optimizing their businesses in other ways.
The company’s devices can access and leverage CANBUS data, a system which enables communication between various parts of a vehicle, such as the engine control unit and airbags, which can be commercialized through collaborations with OEMs.
Customers
The company divides its subscriber base into the following five categories across a range of industries: consumers and sole proprietors, small businesses, medium-sized businesses, large enterprises and other connected devices. The company defines consumers and sole proprietors as individuals or business owners whose vehicles are used for personal and/or business use; these customers typically have between one to five vehicles under subscription with it. The company defines small businesses as commercial customers with up to 24 vehicle subscriptions with it. The company define medium-sized businesses as fleets with between 25 and 99 vehicle subscriptions with the company and large enterprises as having fleets with 100 or more vehicle subscriptions with it.
The company’s strategy for generating scale in a region is to initially build customer volume. The company subsequently target larger business customers. Excellence in service to the company’s customers is core to its values and culture. As of February 29, 2024 Karooooo had more than 121,000 commercial customers. The company provide 24/7 customer support as part of the company’s subscription and its internal teams are proactive in assisting customers over the phone. Additional assistance is also available via phone, chat or email.
Representative customers by geographical regions are listed below:
South Africa: Anglo American De Beers Group, MAN Automotive South Africa, King Price Insurance, Avis Car Rental, The Courier Guy, SA Taxi Finance, Bridge Taxi Finance, Spartan Truck Hire, MultiChoice, SuperSport, Toyota Motors (including Hino), Clicks, Dis-Chem Pharmacies, and Pick n Pay.
Africa: CAT/MANTRAC, Moove, Gemfields Group, Ryce Leasing, NCBA Kenya, Toyota Motors (including Hino), Aids Healthcare Foundation, and Rentworks, AMS.
Europe: Central Cervejas e Bebidas, La Farge, Telefurgo, SONAE, MC Green, Galaxy JMV, Jeronimo Martins, Biedronka.
The Asia-Pacific, Middle East and USA: Singapore Prison Service, Asia Brewery Inc.,Ley Choon Group, Orix, Lim Siang Huat, GetGo, Huationg, Unilever, KFC, CAT/MANTRAC, Hertz, Five Star, Dizon Farms, Lumens, Goldbell Singapore, Coca-Cola.
Sales and Marketing
The company’s strategy to generate scale in the region is to target subscriber volume with consumers and sole proprietors and small businesses as it builds its distribution and customer care model in such region. The company then moves to target the medium-sized businesses and large enterprises in such region. In all regions, the company sells subscriptions of its solutions through its direct sales force.
Sales
The company sella subscriptions to its SaaS fleet management platform through its direct sales organization. Maintaining direct control of its sales force allows it to efficiently target individual consumers and sole proprietors, small to medium-sized businesses with local fleets, and large enterprise fleets.
The focus of the company’s sales efforts is to drive a high volume of transactions through a standardized and highly repeatable methodology. The company focuses on the core challenges that fleet operators face in managing their fleet. The company is able to provide its prospects with an anticipated return on investment, or ROI, calculation that enables it to tangibly demonstrate the benefits of its solutions and how they address the challenges that its prospects face. The company highlights the insights that fleet operators gain from its reports and real-time alerts and how they can use those insights to improve productivity, increase operating profitability and solve key business problems. The company is also able to rapidly deploy its devices into a large fleet, making switching quick and easy. Additionally, the ease of use of its platform allows it to meet the company’s customers to integrate its solutions with relative simplicity.
The company has dedicated sales and marketing teams in each region using the following sales channels, depending on its customers’ needs and fleet sizes:
Inside Sales and Web Sales. The company sell via its internal teams to both consumers and commercial prospects. This is its primary sales channel and a key component of its go-to-market strategy and the teams have typically increased their sales productivity while lowering the aggregate cost of subscriber acquisition to date. The company’s sales agents conduct their selling activities telephonically, in some cases using live web demonstrations to convert sales leads to customers.
Field sales. The company’s field sales team of relationship managers meet face-to-face with prospects and focuses on sales to small businesses, medium-sized businesses and large enterprises. The field sales team is supported by a team of inside sales representatives.
In addition to the direct selling methods set forth above, its field sales teams, with support from its inside sales team, work closely with automobile dealerships, insurance companies and insurance brokers to generate channel-based opportunities for the company to acquire new customers.
Furthermore, both the inside sales teams and field sales teams focus on assisting customers that are adding devices through fleet expansion or broader use of additional applications or software features across their fleet. They monitor customer usage to ensure that its customers are deriving the maximum benefit from its offering.
Marketing
The company’s marketing programs target both individual consumers, business owners and decision-making managers in multiple industries that operate fleets of commercial vehicles. The company’s marketing strategy focuses on lead generation and reinforcing customer engagement and thought leadership.
Lead generation is a core function of its business processes. The company generate leads through a combination of internet-driven inbound activities and traditional outbound marketing activities.
Inbound leads. The company’s inbound leads are largely generated through digital or internet-based marketing efforts. This involves extensive search engine marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing, direct internet traffic, social media platforms and purchased lead generations. The company’s demand generation programs vary depending on its target customer, industry or fleet size, and include marketing activities, such as integrated programs on the internet, outbound marketing campaigns targeted to prospects in key industries and geographies, attendance and sponsorship of trade shows, email lead generation and prospect follow up, and traditional public relations and website properties. The company makes use of social media to engage customers and prospects to generate interest, demand and leads.
Outbound leads. The company’s outbound lead generation involves a variety of traditional marketing activities, including, customer referral, purchased leads, direct mail, email marketing, cold calling, advertising, trade shows and in-person events, and telemarketing. The company accumulates marketing lists through a variety of sources, including purchased lists selected by industry and geographic demographics. The company filters prospects by using industry knowledge to identify quality targets.
Technology
The company designed its SaaS Cloud platform architecture for global access via an internet browser or mobile application. Updates to its platform are distributed instantaneously to all of its customers over the internet. The company’s solutions have been specifically built to deliver:
a consistent, intuitive end-user experience to limit the need for training and to encourage high levels of end-user adoption and engagement;
turnkey, out-of-the-box functionality;
flexibility to design customized reports and alerts that enable its customers to gain insights into their existing fleet and mobile assets;
integration with other systems such as OEM systems, fuel cards, GPS navigation devices, and customer information technology systems, such as work order management and enterprise resource management systems;
scalability to match the needs of its growing customer base and their fleets; and
rigorous security standards and high levels of system performance and availability demanded by its customers.
The company’s fleet management platform consists of a telematics device that incorporates off-the-shelf components, including a cellular modem, GPS receiver and memory capacity sufficient to run its proprietary firmware, which reports vehicle coordinates, time, speed, ignition status, and mileage from satellite readings. This information is collected using an event-based algorithm (allowing the events collected to provide a road hugging presentation on the mapping layers) and then sent to its receivers at third-party data centers via a commercial cellular network. The information is then processed and delivered to its customers providing a wide range of live reporting, mapping, and alerts designed to give customers business intelligence. This information can be accessed by its customers via an internet browser or mobile application as well as be sent to customers by email, an XML feed, or internet services.
The company’s SaaS platform is deployed using a multi-tenanted architecture that scales rapidly to support additional new subscribers through the addition of incremental commodity processing and storage hardware. This architecture flexibility allows the company to sustains high levels of uptime without degradation of system performance despite significant subscriber growth. The company’s existing architecture and infrastructure have been designed with sufficient capacity to meet its current and anticipated future needs.
The company uses many frameworks, most notably REACT developed by Facebook, and write the majority of its software in industry-standard software programming languages, such as JavaScript, python, PHP and C/C++. All software is deployed for its relational database management system. Apart from these and other third-party industry standard technologies, its fleet management solutions have been specifically built and upgraded by its in-house development team.
Operations
The company physically host its cloud-based SaaS platform for its customers principally in seven secure third-party data centers located in South Africa, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates and France. These data centers provide the company with both physical security, including around-the-clock security personnel, biometric access controls and systems security, including firewalls, encryption, redundant power and environmental controls. The company’s data centers maintained over 99.9% system uptime during the year ended February 29, 2024.
The company’s platform technology also includes switches, routers, load balancers, IDS/IPS and application firewalls from top-tier suppliers to serve as the networking infrastructure and high levels of security infrastructure for the network environment. The company uses rack-mounted servers to run its solutions and for content caching. The company uses storage area network (SAN”) hardware with fiber channel and solid-state drives at its data center locations. These SAN systems have been architected for high performance and data-loss protection, and the company believe that these systems have the capacity and scalability to support its anticipated growth for the foreseeable future.
Competition
Many of the company’s competitors offer fleet or mobile asset management software solutions to particular industry segments or in limited geographic regions. For example, the company competes with Verizon Connect, WebFleet by Bridgestone (formerly TomTom), Masternaut (a Michelin Group Company) and Fleet Complete for commercial fleet management in Europe; the company compete with Tracker, Netstar, MiX Telematics, Geotab and CTrack for both consumers and commercial customers in South Africa; and the company competes with a large and fragmented group of competitors in Asia and Africa. Many larger competitors have entered the market in recent years through acquisitions of competing solutions, such as telecommunications provider Verizon acquiring Fleetmatics, as well as tyre companies Bridgestone and Michelin acquiring TomTom and Masternaut, respectively.
History
Karooooo Ltd. was founded in 2001. The company was incorporated in 2018.
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