Chakraview Solutions originated from a personal struggle familiar to parents globally. Motivated by challenges in ensuring her children’s school bus safety, the founder embarked on creating a transformative solution in 2015. The platform addresses issues like erratic schedules and lack of centralized information, offering real-time tracking, communication tools, and attendance monitoring. Notable features include Google Maps tracking, notifications, two-way communication, and QR code attendance marking. Recognized as the “Best Parent App For School Bus Tracking,” Chakraview serves 75 schools and 50,000 students. The founder attributes success to aligning the platform’s mission with the core needs of parents, schools, and bus operators. Future plans include onboarding 150 schools by June 2024, expanding into key markets, and enhancing features to meet evolving challenges. Chakraview’s journey imparts valuable lessons for entrepreneurs: understanding people’s pain points and a commitment to solving them can lead to unprecedented growth and innovation in unexplored markets.
In this exclusive interview, Chakraview Solutions’s Co-founder and Director, Ms. Jaya Bhura, provides us with insights on the pioneering venture that has revolutionized the landscape of school bus safety.
Can you share the personal experiences or challenges that motivated you to launch Chakraview Solutions?
Chakraview stemmed from my personal experience wherein my children’s bus schedules were erratic and as a parent, I was left clueless about whether they were safe and sound. The situation got even more complicated as many times the bus operators interchanged the buses, clubbed the routes and changed the staff in the bus. Most of the time, there is no single point of contact to get clear details on the bus location.
In such situations, calling the school and asking for details of a particular bus is not very helpful either as they too have to track the location via the school bus operators. I am sure, every parent goes through this turmoil daily where they are left anxious, irritated yet helpless.
Hence, I decided that I had to do something about this situation, not just for myself but for millions of parents who are in similar situations. With the advancement of technology in almost every sector, there surely had to be a way to solve this problem as well. And that’s how Chakraview was born in 2015.
This app runs on three basic principles. First, the platform is supported by the high internet connectivity which allows parents to track the location of the bus in real time. Second, every bus is equipped with a separate device, irrespective of the staff or the driver. Thus, there is a single point of contact between the parents and the bus staff via the app. This way, parents do not have to frantically contact numerous people to get details on the bus location. And finally, the app has an attendance monitoring system that assures the parent that their child has boarded/alighted the bus safely. This app holistically caters to the parent’s as well as the vendor’s needs.
What sets key technological features of Chakraview apart from other solutions addressing school bus safety challenges and makes it a comprehensive solution?
Chakraview is a cutting-edge platform that facilitates easy tracking and communication for school buses. This easy-to-use app addresses a myriad of issues that schools, parents, bus contactors & bus attendants face. The app provides real-time bus tracking on Google Maps to parents and schools. Parents also get daily alerts and event-based notifications like attendance alerts of child boarding/alighting the bus, bus reaching the bus stop alert, etc. For direct communication between parents and bus attendants, the app enables 2-way Voice & WhatsApp calling. The app also simplifies attendance marking through manual checkboxes or swiping the child’s ID card’s Qr code.
Apart from this, parents can also pay the school bus fees via the app. It also helps the bus operators in route planning and optimization, organising student database and reconciliation of fee collection. The app solves many loopholes in the entire system making it a comprehensive solution.
With over 75 schools and 50,000 students served, how do you maintain and grow your client base?
We constantly have interactions with bus operators and schools and explain to them the features of the app to facilitate a hassle-free and safe drive for school kids. We also constantly upgrade and update our app with new features to address new challenges faced by parents, bus operators and schools.
Winning the “Best Parent App For School Bus Tracking” award is a significant achievement. What do you believe contributed to this recognition?
This is a huge achievement for us as it reverberates the mission with which Chakraview was conceptualised. Today, we have over 100,000 happy, stress-free parents who no longer worry about the safe commute of their kids from home to school and back. We have 70+ schools that have happily struck off bus complaints from their list of problems and we have numerous bus operators who have been able to provide hassle-free, seamless operation of their fleet of buses. All this has contributed to our recognition.
Your vision includes onboarding over 150+ schools by June 2024. How do you plan to achieve this ambitious target?
We have currently collaborated with over 70+ schools across Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad. This year, we plan to go deeper into the Pune and Ahmedabad markets. We also aim to explore the Jaipur market which offers a huge potential. We are already in talks with several schools and are positive about achieving our target.
Chakraview is being adopted by notable institutions. How do you approach market penetration, especially in diverse educational frameworks and regions?
Today, a robust bus tracking app is the need of the hour for every parent and school. App-based school bus tracking systems might be available in almost every school bus, but the technology is limited to a basic GPS tracking system.
We are constantly growing and evolving our app as we meet new schools and bus operators. We understand their pain points and explore new opportunities to improve our app. Every time we find a strong need that is requested by one school, we build a feature benefitting all the schools.
Given the diverse educational setup and parent’s requirements, we offer different packages as well. For instance, some schools might opt for attendance marking using child’s ID card scanning, while others may opt for a manual checkbox option. This way, we customise our product and its features to cater to the unique requirement of each school.
What are some key lessons or insights you’ve gained from leading Chakraview that you would like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs?
As a start-up, we have realised that if you understand people’s pain points and work toward solving them, there is nothing that can stop your growth. There are a lot of opportunities in the market that are yet to be explored and addressed. Aspiring entrepreneurs should identify those problems and bring a solution.
Chakraview deserves all the accolades. They are doing a fantastic job. They are a flexible team and always give us prompt solutions
Awesome to see what you have been able to do Jaya. Many congratulations and kudos to you for your grit & determination to making a difference!