Track your car and track your kid too!

S Shankar, president and CEO, American Megatrends Incorporation

Recently, AMI's Indian subsidiary designed, developed and launched a vehicle tracking system – Falcon-i in India. On the occasion, American Megatrends Incorporation's president and CEO, S Shankar talked to Pankaj Maru of CyberMedia News and discussed the technology of the new product, its development in India, scope of tracking system in different verticals and usage and business aspects. Excerpts...

With the launch of vehicle tracking system are you trying to give a new dimension to your business as you are already the leader in BIOS and other technology?

AMI is an engineering company. We have been doing BIOS, electronics and so on and so forth. We have been doing product management such as server management for companies like IBM, Dell, Intel and so on. We have been doing server management for many years and have a subsidiary called Geofiny, which provides mapping information.

So, combining mapping information expertise with our expertise in managing servers, we came out with the product - vehicle tracking system. You can say we had the technology and we are applying it to the basic requirements of today.

What is the role the Indian research and development team has played in developing and innovating the vehicle tracking system?

We have many entities world over and we have operations in India. Normally, what we do in India is that the Indian team works with the US team in most of product designing, development and architecture.

The Indian team is an extension of the team in the US, but we encourage the Indian team to develop a product design and take the ownership. So AMI India, with the existing technology, conceived, designed, developed and manufactured this new vehicle tracking system, all in India.

What is the larger scope of vehicle tracking system across the world?

Vehicle tracking systems are niche products, however we think from what we have seen in the market that there are many many possibilities to such technology. Look at the location-based services, which are going to be very important as it can be combined with location-based information and services.

So we believe there can be space for location-based services and have lots of potential in India and globally. Hence we have entered in India.

There are many variations in which this product can be applied to many different fields. As I said the technology remains common here, so what we have here is a vehicle tracking system related to that – the product could be a navigation system for cars.

This car navigation system with a screen to view can show the vehicle and the location within the vehicle. And from this if we take a step to visualize the screen and the electronics, then we can do more things such as infotainment, entertainment and browsing the Internet using the same screen.

So basically you can bridge the gap between a vehicle tracking system, a computer system and an entertainment unit all combined into one and mounted into the car or vehicle.

Even a child tracking system can be developed, where the child can wear a wrist belt and then can be tracked for safety.

The technology can take you to different corners and broad areas bridging the gap. We are going out in providing technologies to the people in the automobile industry.

As you know, the emergence of the India's automobile sector will lead to great demand for vehicle tracking system. Presently, the product is only available in India and we are looking at how it develops its market here and then we will launch it in other markets.

Which are the industry verticals where you can cater this product?

Vehicle tracking system can be applied to different sectors. It could be commercial market, it could be banking sector where the moving cash can be tracked, it could be for intelligence operations for the country's security, where sensitive products needs to be tracked.

Using this technology you can have application for child tracking using wrist belt, tracking for public transport buses and so forth. With so many different sectors you need overall changes and customization, where AMI comes into play as we are able to customize the application as per the requirements.

What kind of market India provides for such niche product and technology?

We are very excited about the product and the results so far. We have already got good number of enquirers for this product; however, we are not marketing it much at this stage. First we want to establish this product in India and then see how it can be taken to other markets.

As you know we are leaders in technology but want to establish ourselves in the niche markets, the same way we did earlier with BIOS and then expand it to different markets.

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