Nigerians urged to use tracking technology to stop car theft, others
Nigerians have been called upon to embrace the use of car tracking technology to stop the incessant car theft and to monitor the use of their vehicles by their drivers and other unauthorized persons.
This appeal was made by Miss Susan Adinoyi, Market Analyst with Concept Nova, based in Lagos while speaking with Daily Times in an exclusive interview during the just ended first Nigerian Drivers Conference held in Lagos, adding that her company, Concept Nova is dealing in the car trackers which the Nigerian market is beginning to key into to stop theft and other anti-car vices.
According to her, Concept Nova is into IT solutions that are creating IT solutions to solve technological problems, stressing that kind of solution is to prevent people from stealing your car or help you to recover your vehicle if it is stolen.
“We have the car tracker which the Nigerian market is beginning to warm up to it. The car tracker is installed in your car and you can monitor the location of your car real time on your mobile phone, by sending a text message in your phone and you get a reply on your mobile phone or you click into our app and it will show you exactly where your vehicle is.
“We also have a recovery team which is a value added service in that if your car is stolen we used our tracker to know where your vehicle is and our recovery team goes and recover the vehicle from that particular location.
“We also have fuel immobilizer that you need to use by logging into your application when you know that your car has been stolen and with the click on button the fuel gets cut off the fuel supply from moving into your vehicle and the vehicle will stop on its own.
She added that the solution is very accessible together with another product that prevents anyone being able to break your vehicle glass to gain access into it.
Adinoyi stated that the company has started creating awareness since last year in Marina and Ikeja location in Lagos but needed to keep educating Nigerians about the use of such technology because whensomething happens and the thing doesn’t work, people tend to have a kind of perception about it. Concept Nova keeps on improving our products, she stressed that technology is not a form of harm, but makes our lives easier.
Nigerians are keying into our car tracking solution to protect their vehicles from theft, she added that the technicians look at your car and know the type of devices that can work with vehicles.
Also speaking with Daily Times, Mr Collins Njoku, Head-Independent Sales said that Concept Nova partnership is at different levels- the franchises that represent the firm in bigger geographical areas and vendors, adding that franchise can buy in large quantity while the retailers buy in small quantity to sell to vendor and to consumers.
He listed Axa, Mansard Insurance, Banker’s Warehouse, MTN, Etisalat, Gurtam and Custodian among others as the company’s partners, while, Harmony Crest MGO Associates, Agritech Holding in Lagos among others as the company’s vendors and Joemark Technical services in Warri as the company’s franchise.
“We have over 50 vendors outside Lagos. This is to expand our reach because we cannot sell our product ourselves. We have to take advantage of the connections that other people have for our partners to make money and we also make money from that partnership.
“An average car user must have heard about car tracking but there are different levels of car tracking. There is the old version technology of car tracking that can be used on the mobile phone, but ours is real time done on the web which will show you exactly where your car is and they will send for us. That is what makes our own more advanced than others.
Beyond theft, the car track solution is to aid in the monitoring of your car’s location with your driver who might want to disobey you, not necessarily to steal the car or even your kid who may want to drive your car without your permission. The car tracking gives you the control to immobilize the vehicle so that he will not be able to go to where he wants to go to.
He explained that the solution makes the person who is going to drive your car know that there is a car tracker in it and so reduces the rate of misuse which would have resulted from not monitoring your car and improves the life span of your car.
“All you need is to install the app on the move through your mobile phone and through it you can view the car on your mobile phone or any internet enabled PC,” he said.
Commenting on challenges on the use of the device, Njoku highlighted thus: “there is no business without challenges. Our car tracking technology depends on telecommunications and telematics solution is a combination of computer and telecommunication technology and since we don’t manage telecommunications we have to depend on a second party for instance MTN, Etisalat and other networks. The efficiency of their own service affects our own service so if their network is failing it hampers our own delivery so from time to time we try to partner with the most effective network in the area where we are tracking. It depends on the network which the client suggest is stronger in his or her area then we use that for the client to make such that the client will not cease to have network on the tracking.
“In a case the stolen vehicle is driven out of the boarder we have connections with the telcos to roam the SIM immediately. If the vehicle has crossed Seme broader once we roam the SIM we continue our tracking.”
