Established in 2000, Geotab is a global leader in IoT and connected transportation. It assists customers to improve productivity and driver safety, ensure regulatory compliance and reduce fuel consumption.
Geotab can work with transport businesses to help them reduce their environmental footprint by leveraging green technology and transitioning from internal combustion engine (ICE) fleets to electric vehicle (EV) fleets.
It has become a leader in providing fleet management and vehicle monitoring solutions and in 2020, was the first to exceed two million connected vehicles on a single, open platform.
“Over the last four to five years, Geotab has seen customer growth and a significant expansion of its product portfolio,” said Geotab general manager APAC, Deepak Kadambi, who has over 20 years of strategy, operations and engineering experience in transportation, technology and telecommunications.
“More than 130 countries and seven continents have Geotab connected vehicles, including Antarctica. Geotab leverages its ecosystem to sell its hardware, enabling it to allocate more resources to research and innovation. This focus on innovation allows Geotab to develop and deliver the highest quality product.”
Geotab’s GO device is agnostic to the size and type of vehicle, the size of the fleet and the industry it serves. While Geotab’s primary business model began centred on hardware, it’s now more about the services and solutions it delivers.
“The appeal and the advantage of being a part of a founder-led company is that it’s switched on when it comes to sustainability; it’s always been a part of the company,” Kadambi added.
“That’s why Geotab started working with electric vehicles over ten years ago when they were not cool yet – sustainability is in the inherent DNA of the company.
“If you look at company baselines from a couple of years ago, there was a drop in the greenhouse gas contribution from 42,928tn of CO2 to 29,269tn. So, there was already an internal formalisation around Geotab’s sustainability practices that started before Geotab put out its inaugural Sustainability Report in November 2021. It has always been the kind of company that has considered the right thing to do – but by making the report public, Geotab wanted to ensure it is holding true to its aspirations.”
In Geotab’s Sustainability Report, four pillars are outlined: safeguard the environment, source responsibly, provide innovation to help organisations improve and create a positive impact in communities.
“When it comes down to how Geotab operates and its social responsibilities, it’s not enough just for Geotab to be socially responsible – Geotab encourages its ecosystem of partners to follow in Geotab’s footsteps and commit to their own social responsibilities, including environmental awareness and climate action,” said Kadambi.
“That’s why Geotab has a partner code of conduct. It has requirements of its partners on things like how they get their energy. Is it clean energy? What are the waste management practices? How are they disposing of waste? Are they recycling? So, that’s not just how Geotab operates, but also how Geotab’s ecosystem of suppliers and partners operate.”
To share its innovations and identify new goals for customers, Geotab launched the Green Fleet Dashboard to show how a fleet is performing over time.
“If there’s a fleet that is transitioning to electric, Geotab has the ability to make that happen,” Kadambi said.
“I would say Geotab is among one of the only companies that can help businesses fully transition from a purely internal combustion engine vehicle fleet to an electric vehicle fleet.”
Ensuring that the transition to electric vehicles is seamless for its customers is what Geotab prides itself on as a business. “If a company has sustainability goals and there is a portion of the business that is extremely dependent on transportation, Geotab can have a conversation with them, understand their pain points, and determine the next steps towards the transition.”