Malaysia ranks 6th in the world in car theft. A startup wants to solve that

What are the chances of your car getting stolen? You might think they’re minuscule. But Malaysian Syed Ahmad Fuqaha doesn’t think so. Fuqaha knows not one, but two people in his immediate circle – his brother and close friend – whose cars got stolen in Kuala Lumpur in the span of just a week.

That’s not a surprise. Citing industry data, Fuqaha says one car in Malaysia is lost every 24 minutes, and less than one out of 10 are recovered and returned to owners.

Malaysia, he adds, ranks sixth in the world when it comes to car theft, with some 312 cars stolen for every 100,000 people.

The grim statistics gave Fuqaha the idea for Katsana, a startup that offers GPS tracking and fuel monitoring systems for vehicles, with data analytics capabilities.

Katsana basically allows its users to track the location of their vehicles through smartphones and ensure their safety.

Enterprise clients

Fuqaha, who comes from an architecture background, was the former project manager for JomSocial, a social platform for Joomla that has had over 180,000 paying subscribers worldwide. While at JomSocial, he met his co-founder Mohd Irwan Ibrahim, who later went on to become a manager at AirAsia Megastore. Irwan brings hardware expertise at Katsana, having studied electrical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

The pair’s initial focus was to bring affordable vehicle tracking to the masses. However, after eight months of market research and four months of developing their minimum viable product, Katsana commercially launched in 2014 targeting mainly enterprises. The team found that companies, namely those engaged in logistics, car rentals, public utilities, were more willing to pay for Katsana’s services than private car owners.

Katsana’s GPS tracking system allows users to trace the current position of their vehicles and retrieve the history of a car’s movement down to the smallest details. This is particularly important in cases of vehicular mishaps. It will also notify users if a car is moved out of a predefined area, signalling the possibility of theft.

Apart from car theft and accidents, a huge issue for fleet management companies in Malaysia (as well as in other parts of the region) is fuel leakage. Fuqaha said some drivers will stop midway on their trip to drain their vehicles’ fuel for their own use or sale to others. Katsana’s fuel monitoring system detects refueling or a sudden drop in fuel level in the tank, and notifies vehicle owners about this in real time. Each notification contains the driver’s information, location, and a visual map of the occurrences, as well as the amount of fuel lost (in liters).

GPS tracking is a rather old business. At last count, Fuqaha said there are 60 companies in Malaysia that do it. That sheer number of players proves that the market is huge, but it also means that competition could be tough.

Insurance companies next