The DRVR team at an event
DRVR, a fleet analytics software provider for logistics and passenger vehicles, announced today that it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Smart Axiata’s Digital Innovation Fund.
With the funding, the company wants to expand its services into Cambodia and hire across the board, DRVR co-founder and CEO David Henderson told e27 in an interview.
The Bangkok-based startup was founded in 2014 by Henderson (CEO), Yevgen Peresada (Chief Architect), and Damien Williams (CFO).
The way it works is that vehicles that use the DRVR technology are attached with sensors that transmit data into the DRVR app. The application then processes and analyses the collected data, and turns the information gathered into actionable insights that shows fleet performance metrics.
“Suppose you have a fleet of trucks delivering goods. As soon as a truck leaves your warehouse, you lose the visibility of it. You don’t know where exactly the truck is, how it’s being driven, or if someone is pinching your cargo or valuable fuel, etc. What if you could make a digital clone of the truck and put that on the internet? You could suddenly see in real-time information about the way it is being driven,” Henderson said.
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“This is what we do. We can also help you predict if it’s going to break down and help you service it. We take this raw data and we transform it into actionable knowledge,” he continued.
In addition to sharing its latest funding announcement, Henderson also shared the struggles that the startup has faced recently in growing its company.
Two years ago, DRVR faced a major setback when it lost its largest customer. While there were other reasons behind it, one of the main ones was because its client wanted DRVR to build a product that was not aligned with its focus.
“In 2018, we lost our then-largest-customer because they wanted us to build a new product for them, and this simply did not align with our plans. A choice had to be made; we decided not to go in that direction but focus our efforts in another area (AI Fuel). These kinds of painful decisions sometimes have to be made,” he said.
“We had hoped that we might be able to keep them as a customer and move in our own direction, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t be all things to all people or you end up being nothing,” Henderson stressed.
The pandemic has not been easy for the startup as it faced challenges. It had to pivot from implementing a direct sales model to a partner sales model; this helped to improve its growth in the last nine months.
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Nevertheless, the startup has been undeterred by its setback to hit its target of having six times more growth in revenue by April next year.
In 2018, DRVR secured US$450,000 from an undisclosed group of investors and had earlier secured a small round of funding from an angel investor group in Hong Kong.
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Image Credit: DRVR
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