Great British Fleet Event partner Gurtam will be at next week’s show to discuss the latest developments in GPS tracking, telematics and IoT.
Ahead of the event, Aliaksandr Kuushynau, head of Wialon – Gurtam’s flagship product – talks about the latest industry developments and the company’s work to innovate.
What is Gurtam’s background?
Gurtam is one of Europe’s most prominent telematics and IoT software developers, with over 20 years of extensive experience in developing software solutions for GPS tracking, telematics and Internet of Things (IoT).
Our flagship product, Wialon, is the largest fleet management and GPS tracking platform worldwide by number of connected vehicles – with over 3.5 million vehicles and other assets, across over 150 countries under control. Throughout its two decades of global experience, Wialon has empowered thousands of businesses to optimise operations by effectively processing and analysing telematics data.
Wialon provides the software solution to over 2,400 telematics service providers, and tens of thousands of fleet managers worldwide. They use the Wialon platform to connect and track vehicles and assets ranging from cargo and passenger vehicle fleets, special machinery, as well as stationary units, including generators and fuel storage units. Wialon-based solutions have been deployed across a broad range of markets and sectors: transportation and logistics, mobility, delivery services, construction, agribusiness, water and waste management, public utilities, railway, mining and processing, and security.
Wialon has developed integrations with nearly 2,900 types of GPS tracking devices from 700 manufacturers, and additionally it is able to process data received from CANbus, OBD and after-market sensors (weight, humidity, light, temperature etc.), cameras, tachographs and other types of hardware.
The company is headquartered in Vilnius, Lithuania, and has offices in Boston, Dubai, Buenos Aires, Tbilisi, employing a team of over 300 people around the world, who contribute their knowledge and expertise to the development of innovative telematics products.
How has the company evolved in recent years and what’s your USP?
Gurtam has achieved significant growth over the past few years, both in terms of the business itself and the solutions that we are providing for fleet managers across the globe.
One significant change to our business in recent years was our exit from the Russian market. When the Ukraine invasion started, we decided to terminate all business in Russia, which was one of our top-performing regions at the time, and where Wialon was the market leader, with almost 50% of total market share in the fleet telematics market. We made the difficult decision to exit that market entirely and whilst it hasn’t been easy, we have achieved commercial growth in 2022 despite that, and this is a testament to the skilled, dedicated and hard-working team. The challenge pushed us to pivot to new industry segments and new products such as Lease Control (a GPS tracking solution tailored for the car leasing sector), and a more intensive and focused business development activity, so over the past year we have achieved growth in South America, Africa and Asia, not forgetting the more mature European and North American markets.
How important is the UK to your plans?
The market size of the fleet telematics industry in the UK in 2023 is £1.1bn, the second largest European market, so unsurprisingly it is a key focus for Wialon. We enjoy great partnerships with around 30 service-providers in the UK, via whom we have enabled the deployment of fleet management and GPS tracking applications for hundreds of companies and public organisations.
As this is one of the more mature markets, we are increasingly seeing the potential for API integrations to open up new avenues for telematics and IoT applications, so we are open to supporting partners and developers in that direction.
What will your main focus be for GBFE?
Our main focus for the Great British Fleet Event is to showcase Wialon’s video telematics capabilities, and how deployment of up-to-date, reliable and user-friendly technology can bring a transformative impact to fleet management processes, by unlocking new safety and risk management features, turbo-boosting productivity and improving visibility and control.
We believe that video telematics is one of the most prominent trends in the fleet management industry. Video telematics provides a whole new level of fleet control, visibility and flexibility – all of which are crucial.
We are looking forward to discussing this topic with fleet managers and automotive professionals at the event, and of course I’m personally excited to connect and share insights and ideas with fleet professionals.
What’s next on the agenda?
For 2023, Wialon’s overarching ambition is to continue to expand globally. The popularity of our platform worldwide is due to its flexibility and ultimate reliability, and to the strength and professionalism of our team. Our growth is driven in sync with our ecosystem of Wialon partners, who rely on the Wialon platform to grow their own businesses – so we look forward to growing together.
As for the future and what’s next, I think everyone in the industry is looking in the direction of AI and automation – fleet managers typically operate with vast amounts of digitised and structured data, fertile ground for AI to identify and generate insights to improve fleet business metrics. The potential for applications in fleet management is hugely exciting!
