Reports suggest that on an average, around 31% of trucking operational costs are accounted towards fuel cost. Fuel theft is a major contributor towards this cost, wherein, around 8% of total diesel filled in trucks is stolen during transit. As per statistics, 2 million tons of diesel was stolen in 2017. Cyrrup intends to reduce this cost and bring profitability to the fleet owners, by curbing fuel theft. In short, its main goal is to reduce the operational expenses in the Indian Logistics industry, starting with the trucking domain.
The company is founded by Gaurav Kumar, a Computer Science alumnus from IIT Guwahati, who is extremely passionate towards his vision of creating a positive impact on the society. Having worked in past with multiple MNCs like Samsung, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Intel, he comes with an extremely rich experience in multiple domains. He has been recognized for his achievements and contribution to multiple projects in all these organizations and won multiple awards and certificates. Currently two of his individual patents are under review and one patent (in collaboration with Qualcomm) on mobile software, is also in the review stage.
Gaurav has managed to form a small but motivated team, which is committed to the purpose of the organization. Their team is a mix of equally passionate Software & Hardware Engineers, and a Business team consisting of Marketing and Sales Enthusiasts. He has led them to come up with market-fit deliverables, and has formed a good ecosystem connect, to help Cyrrup gain foothold in the market.
Having met numerous fleet owners and truck drivers personally in order to understand the issues they face in their day-to-day life, Gaurav realized that diesel theft is a major problem that almost all fleet owners are facing, which is in turn badly hampering the trust that should build up between a fleet owner and his truck drivers. A little market research and talks with fleet owners also presented the problems that existing solutions in the market came along with. Most of the existing solutions drill the fuel tank of the vehicles, requiring at least 5-6 hours of installation time, per vehicle. For a fleet of 100 vehicles, this easily translates to 600 hours of down time. Also, most of the existing solutions are shrink-wrapped Chinese products, with zero after-sales support.
To solve these issues, Cyrrup Tech team came up with an innovative product called DIESEL EYE, which is implemented using IoT based sensor, with a non-drilling technology in the fuel tank. The different voltages coming across the wires/cables under the dashboard are measured; and then translated using their deep-learning algorithm into the quantity of diesel present inside the fuel tank of the vehicle, with an accuracy of +/- 5 litres, for a 350-litre fuel tank. This data is now sent across the 2G network to the server, and in turn presented to the owner of the vehicle using dashboard of their android app. They also have a 1-minute report, which is sent across to the owner of the vehicle at the end of each day. This removes the hassles of day-to-day alerts; and for an owner of a fleet of 500 vehicles, this eases his job such that in a 1-minute snapshot, he knows the action he is supposed to take. This also helps him in figuring out the mileage of the vehicles, such that he can figure out which vehicles he needs to send for servicing and which not.
The differentiator for DIESEL EYE is the way it is installed and the non-drilling technology that is used for this purpose. As opposed to the invasive approach used by the existing solutions in market, wherein the process of installation takes around 5-6 hours, per vehicle, Cyrrup finishes the job in less than an hour, per vehicle, using their non-invasive technology for installation. They are further planning to reduce it to half an hour using their in-lab technology. Additional point which is worth mentioning here is that device installation, as well as the tapping of the dashboard cables, does not interfere with the warranty of the vehicle to a bigger extent.
The IoT sensors that they use are very low-cost sensors, including the Microcontroller, which is the Arm Cortex M0. This enables them to regulate their price, keeping it less than Rs. 11,000, compared to their competitor products, priced at around Rs. 30,000. This further increases their penetration into the market as well as their feasibility and acceptance to the customer. Coming to address the technical feasibility, they don’t install their device in front of the driver. The installation is done below the dashboard; thereby, leaving the entire dashboard in front of the vehicle free, so that it can be planned by the driver and/or the owner, the way it had been planned earlier. Furthermore, the GPS antennas are put across on the top of the vehicle such that they are latched easily and enhance the accuracy with which it could be pin-pointed to the owner. Looking at the entirety of the project, the cloud-architecture ensures the scalability, the low-cost of the product ensures the acceptance and the ease of installation (that can be done by a simple electrical technician) again improves the operational efficiency and the feasibility.
Post-Sales Service is something that is a big miss in the current market and hence it is one of their USPs. Currently, they have their Operations set up in 4 cities in India, which are Delhi, Ranchi, Indore and Hyderabad. They have a vision to have a PAN India service – in the most cost-effective way (without having multiple people on their payroll).
Cyrrup believes in co-creating value with their customers. Being a completely Made in India company, they encourage their customers to discuss their requirements in detail, so that they can build and offer something which is as per their need; in the most optimized and effective way.
They also offer other services such as Fleet Management, which predicts late or missed trip, handles Ops deviations, last minute resource activation, and is also capable of integration with OEM dashboard.
A strong believer of having their own IP rights, Cyrrup has filed 4 patents, all of which have been published. Currently they are in the Full Scale Go-To-Market stage, where in they have done 5 paid pilots, with a potential fleet size of around 500-700. During their pilot phase, they have reduced opex by around 66%, in terms of fuel, for one truck month. Till date they have created a 750 Sales Funnel, with around 50 fleet owners, 6 vendors and 4 distributors.
Future expansions of the company clientele would include more modes of transport in the next 5 years.Â
Cyrrup is part of Intel PlugIn 2.0 program. It was selected in top 10 for Uber Pitch India and is a part of select NASSCOM10K startups. They are also being mentored by University of Texas, Austin through XLr8AP initiative. They are a DIPP recognized startup from the MCA, Govt of India.
In a nutshell, CYRRUP ENGINEERS TRUST FOR INDIAN TRUCKS.
