Trackimo: The All-in-one Tracking Solution

US-based Trackimo is in the business of IoT, with the focus on GPS trackers and offering plug-and-play tracking solutions to both consumers and enterprises market. In fact, for the last two years, the company has been successfully leading the Amazon charts with its GPS Tracker brand, Tracki.  And it was five years ago, they began working with Tele2 IoT in the global markets, where roaming is crucial.

Asset tracking remains one of the fastest-growing segments of IoT, with experts predicting there will be close to 4 billion assets being tracked globally by 2023. Trackimo was founded eight years ago by telecom experts. While they initially aimed their products at the consumer market, Trackimo began offering heavy duty industrial solutions to the B2B market in 2020 – these are heavy duty, rugged trackers with a battery life of up to one year, measuring everything from temperature to humidity.  Globally, the company does not sell directly to consumers, other than through Amazon.  Instead, they work with dealers and partners, who furnish the solution to enterprise customers and commercial customers.

Of course, there are a lot of tracking solutions on the market, though, so what makes Trackimo’s offer stand out?

“First, we have trackers that actually work reliably, unlike maybe 95% of the trackers on the market,” Shai Bar-Lavi, Trackimo’s founder and CEO.  “We show proper location, and we provide adequate battery life. Most of our trackers have come with 3G with a fallback to 2G, which has allowed us to cover the majority of markets. But we have now launched 4G versions and of course we’re looking at 5G – so we’re keeping on top of the technology.

“Additionally, most of our products and devices come from requests from real customers and from real use cases. We don’t just dream something up and hope the market likes it – we develop our products and devices based on the real needs of the market and tie this into the user experience.”

This means that unlike some other tracking solutions, where you buy the tracker, then buy the SIM card and then purchase a subscription, when a customer receives a Trackimo tracker, they just unbox it, download the app, activate and that’s it – they’re good to go. It’s an off-the-shelf experience.

“These are our key advantages: device cost, device quality, backend platform, service, connectivity – all in a one-stop-shop. And because we manufacture our products ourselves, so we can control costs.”

While many tracking solutions focus on one vertical in particular, such as fleet management, Trackimo takes a wider view of the market.

“The strategy is for these companies is to get very professional on one particular vertical,” explains Shai Bar-Lavi. “They make the products with all the bells and whistles, the devices that tie into the engine and everything else that can possibly be measured, with special antennas, and this makes them very good at their particular niche and it also allows them to sell at rather high prices.

“Our approach is mass-market, which is to provide devices that are easy to set up, easy to install. Even if it’s for a vehicle, it doesn’t plug into the engine – it’s plug-and-play, so you can use it for your car, for your child, for your luggage, for anything you want to track. And it’s offered with an affordable price plan. So, it’s affordability and providing the complete solution, end-to-end, which makes us stand out.”

Connectivity with Tele2 IoT

Trackimo has two pillars of business – one is with telecom operators, who buy Trackimo’s devices, sometimes under the Trackmo brand, sometimes white labeled. The telcos then use their own SIMs and their own billing and management systems. Trackimo sends their SIMs to the factory and embed them, so they are integrated into the telco’s own systems. The telcos sell the trackers themselves and manage the ongoing service.

“The other pillar is when we sell directly, either to the consumer or to distributors. These are devices we sell under the Trackimo brand with our own service,” explains Shai. “In this case we use Tele2 IoT SIMs as our own SIM connectivity solution, so the customer doesn’t know it’s a Tele2 IoT SIM in the device because they interface with Trackimo and we provide the complete service.

“Everything works well, so we don’t actually need to access it every day, but when we need to troubleshoot or identify profiles for some reason it works really well – it’s quite a straightforward system. Roaming has also been an important factor – these are trackers that are on the move, after all – and we’ve had just two issues – once in Africa and once in Asia. One was quickly resolved and the other was a problem with the local operator.

One of the products Trackimo is using Tele2 IoT SIMs in is bicycle handles. Together with one of the largest UK bicycle manufacturer, Trackimo has designed a specially engineered tracker that is made as a small cylinder which is built into the bike’s handlebars, serving as both a tracking device with lots of fun features for the biker and as an anti-theft device.

“We are about to release this for both consumers and enterprises, such as those who rent bikes out, like a City Bike scheme. But we actually use Tele2 IoT SIMs in almost all of our products, such as the universal tracker, which is used for cars, bikes, boats, bags, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. In fact, the mini tracker and all other products that are not sold through other carriers carry Tele2 IoT SIMs.”

The future

It’s been nearly eight years since Trackimo first started making inroads in the track and trace market, so they know how difficult it can be to pull all the different elements together, even if you have the knowledge and experience on your team.

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“We think the ‘one stop shop’ concept is where the industry is going, either through one vendor offering the whole solution or partnerships that help you pull all the elements of your solution together. In order to do that successfully, you need competency, which not every company can have. We have a team of engineering experts, communication experts, software experts – and we work with connectivity experts.

“Our strategy is not to develop all the solutions ourselves, but to provide a lot of integration tools to enable the solutions.”