WhatsApp Founder, Brian Acton’s Invested IoT StartUp promises to ‘Trak N Tell’

Imagine driving down an unfamiliar route alone, and your car breaks down and to make matters worse your mobile phone has no battery power, what do you do? To solve this, a predicament that families around the world lose sleep over, Trak N Tell invented an app-based product – Intelli7.

Trak N Tell, an IoT (Internet of Things) start-up, founded by Pranshu Gupta, launched their product in the Delhi NCR market last year – 2015. The product, Intelli7, is a Global Positioning System (GPS) that enables car owners to keep track of their vehicles. It has seven features including vehicle tracking, over-speeding alerts, a panic button that alerts the owner instantly and a feature that is an ‘engine immobiliser’ – to stop the engine of the car from wherever you are – in the case of car thefts. “Yes, we will help you locate the car if it is stolen,” Pranshu says, adding, “but our focus is the family”.

With their in-house research and development team, hardware and software engineers, cloud engineers, mobile-app developers and more – it is a comprehensive ‘Make in India’ initiative. Intelli7, a hybrid between automotive knowledge and computer knowledge, is available in 150 stores – or car accessories shops – across Delhi NCR.

“The problem was the technology was a little ahead of its time”, Pranshu says, adding that before there were bus-tracking systems they were tracking school children in the bus. Being a self-funded company, Trak-N-Tell faced threats to their sustenance and up-keep, amassing funds only to serve as working capital, at the time. When the market grew, and the requirement of funds raised, is when Trak N Tell sought out investors.

Seeing the potential and market size in India, Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, made his maiden investment in

Brian Acton WhatsApp Founder – My Big Plunge (Image Courtesy: StarX for Usatoday.com)

India – through Trak N Tell’s Series-A funding. Trak N Tell managed to raise a seed funding of Rs. 3.4 crore but the exact amount of their latest round of funding is not disclosed. However, it is estimated to be in the range of $3.5 million or Rs. 23.3 crore.

Pranshu says “I was in the U.S and was turned down by a lot of investors until one of them said ‘Yes”. So his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to prepare for a long struggle that may not lead to success.  He adds that building a startup is not “As rosy as it sounds” and may not be a good idea unless “You really have the vision and can survive”.

Pranshu says “I was in the U.S and was turned down by a lot of investors until one of them said ‘Yes”. So his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to prepare for a long struggle that may not lead to success.  He adds that building a startup is not “As rosy as it sounds” and may not be a good idea unless “You really have the vision and can survive”.