By: Rahul Koul
Last updated : October 06, 2022 9:15 am
Durgadutt Nedungadi, Vice President – India & International Business, Netradyne shares insights on how his company is working on technologies that make the transportation of chemicals safer
” Every minute so many people are losing their lives on the road. And invariably this is either due to a lack of skill and training or lack of monitoring. While the technology we have may not completely eradicate accidents or maybe not to get safety to 100% level but it can actually reduce accidents by 40 to 50%. It is all about being able to have a consistent process, monitor, improve safety and minimize exposure to litigation and so therefore exoneration becomes very important. Then of course, all the associated costs that go with any kind of an event on the road have to be managed well,” says Durgadutt Nedungadi, Vice President – India & International Business, Netradyne.
Nedungadi spoke recently at the first edition of “ChemConnect 2022”, a logistics and supply chain event, organized by Indian Chemical News (ICN) on September 21, 2022 at The Lalit, Mumbai.
Sharing insights on how his company is making logistics safer, Nedungadi says, “Netradyne has been in existence for about six and half years now. We are in the business of using aid as technologies to improve driver behaviour on the roads, to improve safety and therefore to actually save lives. We are privileged to be on the Forbes list of the Top 50 companies that they believe are making a difference in the AI world. We are a company which is dual headquartered in India as well as in the EU. Our entire R&D, happens and manufacturing happens in India and today we export globally. We are fortunate to have 6 billion driving miles of video data behind us, which gives us the ability to give you predictions which are really very accurate. We have 2000 plus customers across the globe and about close to 200,000 devices and trucks on the road.”
“We started our business very consciously limiting ourselves to the USA and India. The reason for that is obviously the driving behaviours of the two geographies are probably the most polar opposites. So if a device can work in the EU as well as in India, most likely it'll fit into most, most roads with a little bit of flexibility. So that's where we started. We are now present in New Zealand and the UK. We will soon be launching in Germany next quarter. We are in late trials in Malaysia, Mexico, and South Africa. We are now really becoming global. Our primary investors include RIL, Microsoft Ventures as well as .72 and then late in July last year, SoftBank came in our series C funding. We are now about a Rs 1000 crore company and we are growing too, year on year,” informs Nedungadi.
Explaining the technology, Nedungadi mentions, “We have a combination of software and the hardware. We have the device which has two cameras, one pointing outward on the road, one pointing inward at the driver. We have a very comprehensive portal which we call the integrated driver management system. We have a driver eye app which the driver as well as the fleet manager can use to get all their alerts and all the details of what is happening on the way on their mobile device. And then we have extensions. So there are a lot of companies who want more than two cameras. They would focus on all directions of the vehicle. But that's just the hardware. This is really where the intelligence comes in. We analyse almost everything, right from heart breaking events, low G Force events, right through to vision based events, for example in Western countries where road signs are fairly consistent, we actually recognize speed signs, stop signs, traffic lights, U-turn signs. This is from the outward looking camera.”
He adds further: “The inward looking camera monitors the driver. Is he wearing a seat belt? Is he talking on the phone? Is he browsing or is he distracted? All of this actually gets monitored by the inward looking camera. So anytime there is an infraction, which means anytime there is a breach in the threshold of any of these areas, an in-cab alert comes to the driver saying that you know you need to correct this. As well as a minute-long video gets uploaded onto the cloud which is visible for the fleet manager to see and as well as the driver eye app with the drivers can also see what has actually happened. In addition, we have a number of utilities like a visual log in system so that drivers can be actually attributed to vehicles. We have live streaming, which means that you can actually press a button on your console and see exactly what is happening on the vehicle at that point of time. These utilities actually make the entire process of driving seamless and safer.”
Sharing a few practical examples, Nedungadi says: “Shell in India has mandated that their entire fleet of tankers will not ply on the road unless our devices are functional. It is almost mission critical for them. After deploying our technology, they were getting alerts every two and half hours for different kinds of infractions done by driving, whether it's speeding, harsh breaking, or anything to do with the driver. The reduction in such alerts has been exponential and steep. So when people say that technology does not work on Indian roads, this is living proof that it does. However, there is a caveat here. Technology must also be able to adapt to Indian roads. For example, if I were to transport a device which works in the US to India, just following a distance would give me constant beeps in the cabin, right? It should be able to alert against the auto-rickshaws and warn against animals crossing the road right. We are able to do it because we chose to actually manufacture in India and have the ability to adapt to the different geographies that we are in.”
Nedungadi believes that technology doesn’t work unless we are able to improve driver behaviour.
“The positive recognition of driving behaviour helps a lot for drivers to be able to adapt to the technology. So we have a very extensive scoring mechanism where every fleet will know where there drivers are and how they rank from top to the bottom. And there are multiple ways to coach drivers including manual coaching which the fleet manager can do based on the videos which have been uploaded by that driver. There are automated ways where the system will actually throw up every week. If a driver changes two or three behaviours on the driver eye app, he will get a high Green Zone score. We actually give him what we call driver eye stars, so that he gets recognized.”
“As we move forward on this journey of making roads safer, protecting against events happening is one way but the longer term solution is to actually improve driving behaviour. This is what our technology has been really accepted for worldwide over. We protect precious lives and hazardous cargo. We make roads safer and we are proud of doing it as a make in India company,” concluded Nedungadi.