Chennai: With attacks on young female business process outsourcing (BPO) employees beginning to rise, monitoring the movement of the vehicles used to transport them at odd hours in real time becomes critical.

The Chennai-based American Megatrends India Private Limited (AMI) has come out with a tracking device called Falcon i.

"Priced around Rs.15,000 per unit, Falcon i use global system for mobile (GSM) technology to track the vehicle round the clock. It could be fixed to taxis and good carriers," said Jayaram Krishnan, director & CEO.

According to him the radio taxis in Chennai and Bangalore use costly radio technology, similar to that found in police patrol vehicles. The draw back with the equipment is that if the vehicles travel beyond the coverage range of the radio signals, their movement cannot be monitored.

AMI''s Falcon i, overcomes this handicap as it can be programmed to send out the vehicles'' location at predetermined intervals using short messaging service (SMS) to an optional monitoring station or to the website of the fleet owner/operator, said Krishnan.
The system enables display of the vehicles location on digital maps. Also the vehicle owner/operator can track the vehicle using his mobile phone or through a web interface.
The monitoring station records details about the vehicle''s location-latitude, longitude and altitude- ground speed, date, time, fuel and vehicle health parameters like engine, fuel temperature, battery voltage/current and others.

Krishnan said the device comes with four sensors which could be programmed to monitor and communicate the required parameter.

The Falcon i''s geo fencing facility enables immobilisation of the vehicle when it tries to take a different route or go beyond a prescribed distance.

"We are targeting a revenue of Rs10 crore during the first yearof introducing the product," he added.

Apart from targeting the Indian market, AMI has plans to tap the Middle East and African markets for Falcon i.

AMI incorporated as an offshore development centre for its American parent the $75 million revenue American Megatrends, has now branched into making products like storage solution StorTrends iTX and Falcon i.

"Some more products are in the pipeline," said Krishnan.

Unwilling to disclose the revenue of 300 employee Indian company, Krishnan said the revenue mix between software services and product sales will be 75:25.

He also said the company would look at setting up a production line for the vehicle tracking equipment if the volumes turn out to be economical.