The e-hailing industry is a gold mine. Various ride-sharing and carpooling solutions are flooding the market to provide convenient connectivity to urban folks.
Easy Rides, a new player in the flourishing field, is a Malaysian startup that rents vehicles to ride-sharing drivers. So far, it is steadily growing. But the vehicle-rental business is not without its challenges. Easy Rides encounters a headache that afflicts many companies with a large fleet: staying on top of each vehicle’s whereabouts and condition.
To cut cost wastage, a company needs real-time data about where its products are going and how they are doing. Unfortunately, Easy Rides had a tough time keeping track of its moving stock of vehicles on the road.
1.Increased risks of theft
A vehicle-rental service without fleet tracking capabilities is like a shop that does not have a CCTV camera. The stock – in this case, cars that easily cost RM30,000 to RM40,000 each – were sometimes outright stolen
2.Errant drivers cause expensive repairs
Some drivers were careless with sending in their cars to be serviced on time, which worsened the wear and tear of these vehicles and incurred significant repair costs.
3.Time-consuming repossession
When drivers lapse on rental payments, they usually also go missing with the vehicles. Without the ability to track the vehicles’ location in real time, Easy Rides’ repossession team takes months to recover the lost stock. This ends up disrupting operation flow.
Easy Rides do not want to remain in the dark about its vehicles. It searched for a way out, and found iFleet. Since installing the GPS tracking and fleet management software, the vehicle-rental startup saw marked improvement in:
Ease of repossession
With iFleet’s GPS tracking functions, Easy Rides knows exactly where all its vehicles are at all times. When a driver misses a rental payment, the repossession process happens quickly and smoothly, thus cutting downtime as a new driver could be put on standby to take over the vehicle immediately.
Staying on top of vehicle maintenance schedule
iFleet gives Easy Rides another superpower – the ability to recall vehicles for inspection and control vehicle service intervals. Once the odometer on a vehicle hits a predetermined range, an automated message is flagged on the iFleet dashboard. Since its activation, Easy Rides recorded a 30% reduction in cases of drivers not sending in their cars to be serviced at regular intervals.
Cost savings and customer satisfaction
Keeping vehicles well-maintained is a win-win. It not only save repair costs for Easy Rides, but also enhance the safety and user experience of customers – the drivers.
Transparency for investors’ peace of mind
Easy Rides’ investors are the vehicle owners. iFleet’s vehicle tracking and fleet management system allows both the investors and Easy Rides team to monitor the fleet together, simultaneously. This is done by opening sub-accounts within one registered iFleet account, and designate them to different users – a unique feature that no other fleet tracking solution currently offers.
the deciding factors that pushed me towards selecting iFleet for the 100 vehicles in my company was that they understood the challenges of starting a company from the ground up. As a start-up, cash flow can be a significant factor to pay the deposit for all the vehicles. Upon hearing my concerns, the iFleet team customised a package to suit my business needs and I appreciate the sincerity of the gesture.
- Eric Lee, Founder of Easy Rides