XGear’s story is of a typical high tech journey. I would classify this team as a hybrid between researchers and entrepreneurs. Had this team been in the developed world, they would have ended up in the R&D lab of an automobile manufacturer researching and be producing new technologies. They came up with the idea to develop an automobile monitoring device that would connect directly with the car engine and give vital statistics of the engine and other parts of the car. They failed once, but kept going and finally tasted success despite limited resources. When they came to MIT-BAP, their idea was at conceptual level only but showed great promise. My role was to help them understand the market potential, then convert the idea into proper market segments and based on that, develop a sound product strategy. The XGear team is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit, as it continues to work hard under any circumstances. XGear has several key accounts as their customers now and are exploring international
XGear: Waiting for the right time to make dreams come true.
Sometimes, one needs to wait for the right time to launch a venture. Three students developed a commercially viable product before related technology caught up with their idea. Disheartened, they packed up and waited almost a eight years when an opportunity to revive their project came. Until this time, no other company had come with an easier solution than they did. So the revived the student project and launched XGear.
final year project
With the help of two of his friends Usman Riaz Ahmed Khawaja and Kamran Shahid Butt, Ahmed Khalid transformed this passion into a student project at his university with and came up with XGear. The project entailed gathering details about the car such as the RPM, temperature and speed of the car and running diagnostics and analysis to give useful data about the car journey and the state of the vehicle.
“I have loved cars since I was three years old,” remembers Ahmed. “Members of my family would gift me cars and I would collect, categorize and catalog them with great care. So I convinced my partners at FAST to do a final year project related to cars.”
In 2006, the team was able to develop this prototype model as a final year project in university. They developed their first prototype model of the idea in roughly six months, however did not have a vehicle to test it on. Ahmad was able to convince his maternal uncle to let them test the prototype on his car. Then they got busy carrying out multiple iterations on different cars and analyzed the data.
After graduating university in 2006, they contemplated selling their product to the big names in the automotive industry. However, the team dropped the idea after graduation, and packed up their project, as there was no one willing to invest in it at that time. So they all went their own ways.
One Step Solutions
They joined hands once again in 2008 the three decided to launch their own company, One Step Solutions. The company’s core capabilities comprised creating scalable solutions including e-commerce, web-development, multimedia, groupware, and databases.
In 2013, XGear was revived through a chance query by a fellow team member who asked to use the product to diagnose a fault in his own car. Since there was no good substitute in the market for their product, the team decided to revive the product.
At the end of 2013 after competing in several competitions, Ahmad convinced Usman and Kamran to apply to Plan9 specifically for the project. They agreed, but said that they would continue working on One Step Solutions and bootstrap XGear which Ahmed would manage until they could find a customer.
In 2016, XGear launched successfully. The system participated in an international Series A round and won US$ 40,000 at Startup Chile. It now boasts a growing customer list of companies such as Nestle, Pepsi, Toyota and Honda.
XGear
Ahmad thinks that there are essentially three things that are missing in all forms of behavioral analysis of fleet in the market – context, maintenance and hardware. XGear is a predictive analytics platform for vehicles that provides this for the cars. It now delivers real-time actionable insights to drivers and car owners for pre-emptive car maintenance and performance optimization. By collecting millions of data points and aggregating them, XGear is able to perform predictive analysis using machine learning to identify risks of certain events happening and informing drivers before they take place.
XGear provides a mobile and web-based interface to drivers and corporations for
monitoring and improving driving behavior, increasing fuel efficiency, pre-emptive car maintenance, geo-fencing, vehicle tracking, forensic audits and safer driving.
XGear Today
They have projected revenues up to US$ 500,000 for 2016 and currently have 4,000 devices installed for which they charges US$ 28 per month. So far they have analyzed over 80 million data points with one and fifty data points in each system. XGear has two teams now, one that handles supply chain management and one that is entirely vehicle centered.
To read the full story of XGear’s rise from a student project to a half a million dollar company serving international clients, read Rising Tidenal markets.
