June - 2005 issue > On The Cover

By Robin Joseph Mathews

Jane Smith, a subscriber of British Gas, in Europe is happy and delighted with the company’s gas installation and repair service. She not only gets things done fast and on time, but also at greater flexibility and timely service from the installation technician.

It was surprising because she was used to technicians either coming late or even not showing up! The timely service has increased the customer rating for British Gas. How did this happen? The secret lies with Mobile Resource Management—an innovative way of putting people and work together. And all this real time, at the cost of the provider and comfort of the customer!

Yes, that’s the MRM technology Krish Panu’s AtRoad is building; “Changing the way consumers are going to experience the future,” Panu says. In an era of intense competition, providing timely service can give a company a big leap. “With tens of millions of mobile workers in the U.S., we believe there is a multi-billion dollar market potential for MRM services. We have realized only a small portion of the market potential for MRM solutions,” says Panu.

Research house Frost and Sullivan estimates MRM will be a $1 billion business by 2007. Since the market is still in its early stage of adoption, AtRoad clearly has a leadership position with a scalable business model. “A model that not just makes money but also solves the customer problems,” says Panu. “There is a real world problem of solving the need that customers are facing. AtRoad demonstrated large corporation and fortune 100 customers, who have used our technology, as to what that need is. Through which their productivity has increased by 18-20 percent in industrial workforce.” AtRoad is the current leader in the sector with marquee customers such as SBC, Verizon, British Gas, and Quest Communications.

But all good things don’t have a good start. Panu, 46, previously had the opportunity and experience of working with a billion dollar chipmaker Atmel, where he headed the logic division. His determination and grit had in fact raised Atmel from $ 50 million to a $ two billion company—Atmel was one of the fastest growing billion-dollar companies. And his logic chip making division was the backbone. Interestingly, one of the directors of Atmel offered Panu the opportunity to head Vectorlink a company developing GPS technology. Panu took the challenge to live his dream of heading a company and as the head of Vectorlink re-christened it as AtRoad, of course, helping develop further technologies.

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