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Thobeka Ntshangase is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MyFleet Track, a leading tracking and fleet management company in South Africa. In this exclusive interview with AUTO REPORT AFRICA, Thobeka reveals her motivation for venturing into the business, saying despite the challenges in the industry, MyFleet Track has all it takes to offer top-notch professional services to its clients . Thobeka also discloses that her ambitious plan for the future is to see MyFleet Track as the biggest black-owned vehicle tracking and fleet management company in Africa with offices in across the continent. Olaolu Olusina brings the excerpts;
In the beginning…..
Thobeka Ntshangase is 31-year-old, born and bred in Ladysmith KwaZulu Natal. I’m a mother of four boys and a businesswoman. I completed my secondary schooling at Ladysmith Secondary School in 2009 and proceeded to further my studies in Durban at the University of KwaZulu Natal Westville Campus (UKZN). In 2012, due to financial constraints, I was forced to drop out of university and return home. When I returned home, I had to create means to survive and it was then that I started my first business which was a school furniture manufacturing company that supplied furniture to various schools and the department of education. In 2017, I wanted to grow and venture into other businesses, so I moved to Johannesburg, where I ventured into Transportation and Logistics. It was exciting and new. It gave me new challenges which is how I came up with MyFleet Track, a tracking and fleet management company to support and limit vehicle abuse, monitor diesel theft, and reduce load theft from drivers which were the biggest challenges the industry was facing at the time. MyFleet Track was created to address those challenges and service the broader business community with all their tracking needs. 
Services and Challenges in the sector
MyFleet Track offers vehicle tracking and fleet management services to both individuals and businesses. Our products/services include but are not limited to Stolen Vehicle recovery units (Trackers), and Telematics solutions that assist businesses with monitoring their employees, monitoring fuel consumption for each vehicle, analysing driver behaviour as well generate scorecards for each driver. We also offer our clients video telematics solutions which are the use of AI cameras to monitor in/out cabin activities giving the customer vision of their fleet in real-time. MyFleet Track being a small company has faced many challenges like being accepted by insurance companies in South Africa but through our hard work and perseverance, we have managed to get a value added partnership with one of the big five vehicles tracking companies in South Africa which has put us in the position to offer solutions that are now approved by all insurance companies in South Africa. It has also given us the ability to scale our business to meet more clients and service the market with confidence and be competitive with the other leading companies.
The local market and prospects for service providers?
The South African vehicle tracking market was valued at R154 million in 2019 and was projected to reach R464 million by 2027 with some 3.6 million united fitted years on year. As the market matures and more and more people become woke of the importance of vehicle safety, the market remains very competitive for new players and there are great prospects of becoming successful as a service provider.
Fleet management system for SMEs and big corporations
As an SME, it’s very important to reduce financial leakages in your business and often these come from fuel, tires, breakdowns, and wear and tear, which a basic MyFleet Advance telematics package can help with. MyFleet Advance can help you with the following: Monitor Fuel Consumption, Monitor Driver Behaviour, Service and Maintenance reminders, Expenses Management as well as tyre pressure monitoring. As an extra, you can also have pre-inspection in your app to ensure all drivers fill it in daily to prevent breakdowns on the roads, etc. For big corporations, we can recommend the MyFleet Plus package which gives you everything on MyFleet Advance package plus the ability to add Artificial Inteligence cameras which do provide 360-degree live feed in real-time, with second-by-second alerts for things like smoking in the car, seatbelt alerts, fatigue, and distractions to reduce accidents. The Plus package is also ideal for those who need to continuously monitor temperatures, and for those who are in the side tipper business as the system enables the fleet controller to enable and disable the PTO (Power Take-Off) to offload the loaded load at the wrong place thus reducing theft of loads.
The journey so far and lessons learned over the years
The journey has been great yet painful and costly. When we started this business, we did not even have a financial institution to finance us for the actual hardware which is fitted on the vehicle, so we had to sell a lot of our paid-off belongings and assets to finance the business. We have had customers install tracking units and not pay us the monthly rentals fee which cost us a lot of relationships in the start considering that we took loans from family and friends. The road is still not smooth, but we have also learned a lot along the way. We now focus mostly on business-to-business clients who sustain our business. We are also thankful to the partnerships we have signed which have helped us a lot because it now gives clients fewer reasons to cancel their contracts with us and increases faith and trust in our brand. The lessons have been to focus less on the broader market and attract only those who need the solutions we offer.
Expansion/projections plans for the next few years
Wow, where do we see MyFleet Track? MyFleet Track is going to be the biggest black-owned vehicle tracking and fleet management company in Africa with offices in all parts of Africa. We see it as the only alternative tracking company aside from the big five companies which will be hiring strictly youth, female, and highly energetic personnel to lead us into the next growth stage. We see ourselves researching and developing our telematics hardware, bringing in last year’s University students to lead and develop new technologies. Our expansion plans include increasing our employee-count to at least 300 people, all customer-centric and with energy to service our clients with respect and honour. For the year 2023, we want to add 15 000 new clients and provide an opportunity for independent youth-owned fitment centres to do our installations and maintenance for units in our client’s vehicles.
Advice for women planning to take a plunge into privately-run business ventures
Never give us, reject shortcuts and work at it all the time. From where we started to where we are today, we have had a million reasons to stop but we never did. Keep your head high and do not shy away from a challenge. It will take time but keep at it. Seek networks and build partnerships with those like you. From my experience, forget handouts. If you believe in your brand and products, figure out a way to start and fund your hustle.
Assurance for prospective clients.
If you are a client, moving to MyFleet Track will not only add you as a client in our database but you will be feeding families who wake up daily trying to make this business work. You will be embracing the dreams of many hopeless people who apply daily for jobs and who share their sad stories of being unemployed for years due to not having experience. With all which you can get from the next big established tracking company, we can offer you it and more. Our units are insurance approved, we are faster, and with whatever revenue we make, we give back to the future through meaningful donations to kids in need, whose future can change for the better with a little support.
