CCCT with Sumit Chauhan, COO & Co-Founder from CerebrumX

CCCT sat down with Sumit Chauhan, COO & Co-Founder from CerebrumX that achieves inherent energy efficiency and reduced carbon footprint, ensures that the data they gather fuels a smooth transition to electric vehicles. Their AI-driven battery and infrastructure insights enable enhanced operational efficiency, pre-empt vehicle maintenance and product alignment with latest government regulations.

#fleet #vehicles #ai #maintenance #data #technology #software #electricvehicles

Transcription

Hey there Commercial Construction Coffee Talk fans. Thanks for chiming in. My name is David Course, and I’m your host. I’m also the publisher and editor of Commercial Construction Renovation magazine. This is what it used to look like. I’ve got a little glare there from my light, but anyway, breaking out the archives. This was September-October 2015, eight years ago. Level Office, Joe Bacchus, and Kelsey Belk. Actually, I think these guys have merged with a couple of other office places, but anyway, we appreciate those guys. Grace on the cover way back when it seems like, but another great looking issue. This was a hundred and… I don’t know, is this one 154 pages? Really, really nice. I always like looking at where I was. Up there I am in Washington, DC. We did a conference with GAF Roofing and we had about… I don’t know, there’s probably about a hundred people that attended that conference. They rented a boat, we went down Potomac in Washington. It was a beautiful day there, and I think it was in August, but really good event. And boy, I had a lot more hair back then, you know. I’m getting gray and whatever, so it’s amazing to see I had hair back in 2015. So anyway, it’s TGIF, getting ready for the weekend, recharge your battery, clear your mindset, stay positive, and do it all over again next week. Got Labor Day coming up in a couple of weekends here in the States, and school’s already started here down here in the South and up North there for Labor Day. Everybody goes back to school, and you know, it’s the days are flying by. I said on my last podcast, I can’t believe it’s already the middle of August. It just feels like yesterday that the year started and I’ve just been, you know, when you’re busy and you’re having fun, time just flies and that’s, it’s just amazing. And before you know it, it’s going to be the holidays and boom, 2023 is going to be over and we’re going to be ringing in the new year before you know it. So anyway, I hope everybody had a great week like I said and TGIF. I’ve got some thunderstorms rolling through here in Atlanta, and we’ll take the water. We always like keeping the lake full, but hopefully my power won’t go off and we’ll get through this episode. Today, I have a gentleman. He’s halfway across the world traveling in India, but he’s Adam Jersey. His name is Samit Jahan. Did I say that right, Samit?

Yeah, absolutely.

And he’s with a company that deals with Fleet Technologies. It’s called Cerebrum X. Hopefully I pronounced that right. And the reason why I had Samit on is, you know, let’s everything about getting a project done, you know, with project management and, you know, whether it’s materials, labor, and listen, without vehicles, you’re not going to get the project done. You’ve got to get products shipped, you got to have equipment delivered. I can go down the list and making sure that, you know, where all of these assets are is crucial, not only to your budget, but if you’re the, you know, the company that’s running the equipment, etc., you want to keep an eye on things. So, but once again, without trucks or equipment, you’re not going to get any projects on, especially in construction. So that’s why I had Samit on, because, you know, with labor shortages and this and that, just knowing where everything is, you know, from a standpoint of getting things done, because, you know, if you’re a retailer building a store, they print the circular and everything else is backed up from there. So getting things on a timely delivery and making sure that you have everything in place is crucial to meeting your budget, getting the project done, you know, on time, on budget, and hopefully, you know, a smooth transition to the end user when you give them the keys and they’re punching their final punch-out list. So to me, the way this is going to work is, uh, you’re going To tell your story, where you grew up, where you went to school, and how you ended up where you are today, you know, in the fleet technology sector. Then we’ll talk about the roller coaster over the last three years that we’ve all been going through and Lessons Learned, and how your company weathered the storm, and any new products or services that you think our listeners out there in Commercial Construction Coffee Talk might find of interest. And then you’ll leave one positive thought or phrase and your contact info, and then we’ll close out our discussion. So with that said, the floor is yours to me. Tell us your story, Samit.

Thank you for having me today, and as you said, it’s a Friday, so it’s a good time to spend some time reflecting on what we’re doing and what we’ve done so far. So thank you. So as you’ve mentioned, I’m back in India just visiting my team here where we do all of our development and product management. I actually grew up in New Delhi, that’s where I am right now at my home here. I did my engineering here, all my schooling here. And as you said, I used to have a lot more hair, but how I like to put it is, I’m more aerodynamic, just like you now. Yeah, so yeah, I did all of my studies here, joined my first company, which was a satellite company you might have heard of them. It was called Hughes. That’s where I started my job in software, and I continued with them for 11 years, finally moving on while I was leading the Telecom business for them. Then I moved on to Nokia Siemens, which was undergoing the merger at the time, again in the Telecom domain, leading a global business. I should mention, through right through this time, I was living and working right across the globe. So I was working in Japan for a while, I was in Europe, I was in the US. So that gave me a great experience, not just in terms of the cultures and working with different kinds of people, but also a great insight into how different economies make it work with the circumstances that they have. And I got my hands on a car when I was 20. It was still a luxury in India at the time I was growing up, and I was lucky to have a car when I was 20, and instantly fell in love, and vehicles and automobiles have been kind of my first love all through. And hence, when the opportunity came about about nine or ten years ago, I joined Harman, which is, as you know, one of the leading tier ones, and also a Samsung company, where I was leading the automotive business for them, which I was till August of 2020. When we realized that while we were working very closely with the OEMs in the automotive space, enabling them to come up with new technology, enabling them to come up with the next generation of vehicles, both from a hardware point of view but also more significantly from a software point of view, what we realized is with the advent of a lot of connectivity coming in, electrification coming in, and autonomous driving coming in, there is a lot of data that is being collected inside the car, and obviously by the OEMs from an overall maintenance and upkeep kind of point of view.

What was not happening, unfortunately, at the time, was what do you do with that data and how do you make sense of that data, whether you’re in the retail consumer space or the commercial Fleet space? So that’s where the genesis and the thought process for Cerebrum X came about. And we figured that it’s high time that we should have a company like Cerebrum X that sat in between the humongous amounts of data that resides with the OEMs on one side and on the other side, a large set of partners and ecosystem customers that we have today who want This data and want to do something with this data and we are willing to pay for this data, but they just don’t have the wherewithal to do those Integrations, make sense of the unit economics and so on and so forth. So that’s where really the entire Genesis of Cerebrum X came about. You mentioned since 2020, it’s been a tough time for everyone, especially on the commercial Fleet side but also for individuals because of the economy, the job market, movement in terms of the workforce, you know, from one location to the other, people moving back to their home States or hometowns. So there was a lot of disruption at the time. We were lucky enough, you know, still to raise funds. We’d been invested into by LG Electronics, Sirius, BlackBerry, and also Pioneer. So we’ve been lucky in that sense that we could ride that storm, almost a perfect storm for any startup, you need to be in that space. But what also happened during that time is there was, as was true with I guess all businesses, there was an extreme realization of what you can do with data and what it means for our customers as well as for the OEMs. And let me elucidate why I’m saying that. For the OEMs, it was an extremely tough time because at least at the beginning of the pandemic, it was a very uncertain environment from a sales point of view, that is the sale of new vehicles.

But it was also an extremely, I would say, challenging time from a supply chain point of view because they were not getting enough hardware, chipsets, and you can see the repercussion of that even now as it continues. So what happened is they learned that their sales are shrinking, their gross margins are going to diminish because of the reduced demand, plus also the supply chain meaning that the cost of production was higher. What that meant is they immediately started looking at what else we can do in terms of generating revenue and data has always been looked at by OEMs as an asset, and but as I mentioned, they’ve never been able to really commercialize it or make money from it, and of course, complying to all the standards, which is GDPR and CCPA, so on and so forth. So it was a realization on their part that they need to do something on the data side, that was one, but also when we look at commercial fleets, it was okay when your commercial fleet vehicles were running 24 cross seven, you were working all days of the week right through the month, nobody really cared of what is it, just as an example, nobody really cared what is the insurance premium that you’re paying on that vehicle because it was paying for itself. But just imagine then that utilization fell to almost zero in some cases because there was no construction happening, because there was no workforce and there was no demand either. It was an extreme pressure on the Fleet Management Companies and the fleet companies themselves into in terms of how to reduce cost and how to prove do the insurance companies that actually the vehicles are not being driven as much, they’re actually not even being touched.

How do you prove it to the insurance companies and make a case that the insurance premiums need to be reduced? And luckily for us, that’s exactly what we were working on at the time because, you know, using our technology which is based on our completely homegrown platform which is called augmented deep learning platform which is an AI ML based data management platform for connected vehicles, we were able to track the exact usage of the vehicles. We were able to track the exact mileage that is incurring on a per vehicle basis. We were also able to track in case you know Your vehicle was very rich in terms of functionality, which used connectivity. We were also able to help the OEMs renegotiate their contracts with the service providers like AT&T or Verizon or T-Mobile, prove to them that the usage is not as much as what was signed up earlier, and hence we need to renegotiate the contracts and bring them lower because the language usage is not up to par. Similarly to the insurance companies, we were able to prove that, you know, we would be able to reduce the premiums because the risk on the vehicles is much lesser because of the environments they’re functioning in. There are only a few drivers who are operating or operators who are operating these, you know, these huge fleets of vehicles. And also because the range of movement and the sort of, so to say, the field of play for these vehicles was also limited. Now you only had a few construction sites, which meant that they were better controlled and monitored rather than, you know, these vehicles being all over the place or all over the country or all over the state in many cases and are harder to monitor. But along with that, there came a risk because of the depletion in the workforce management and the project management work staff. How would you monitor these vehicles? And the answer to that was you have to do it remotely. You need all the data coming in from the vehicles in real time to you so that you can track it but also you can take meaningful action if you see something nefarious happening. Just as an example, if you see suddenly the fuel level of, you know, of a vehicle dropping, you know, to half its value, you know what’s happening, right?

You know, somebody is driving it or taking out the fuel. If it’s happening in five minutes, you know, you’re going to half a tank, you know something nefarious is happening. Also, if you set up a Geo-fencing and a Geo boundary, which we can do with our software, and you see the vehicle going out of it, you know that, you know, there might be a loss happening here in terms of a theft or something like that. And we’ve helped our customers, you know, to control those kinds of losses. So the larger point I’m making, David, is that, as you mentioned, it was a perfect storm for many reasons, but also it created opportunities and a thought process both on the OEM side as well as on the people who actually utilize this data in terms of how they want to use it and how they, you know, how they want to really make sense of this data but also to create value. And they were willing to pay for this data. So, you know, those are my initial thoughts and I’ll stop if you have any specific questions there right there to me. All really, really good points. You know, here in the states right now, just for my, you know, if I was, you know, if I was a truck fleet and, you know, whether it’s the battery or the gasoline, like you said, all of a sudden you see in five minutes that the tank is half empty. Right now here in the states, gas is, well, here in Georgia, we’re teetering right below four dollars, but it’s very expensive, you know, and that’s just one of the components what driving fleet is gas. So having that security to just keep, you know, from a data point of view, you know, data, you know, look, I’m a digital guy now so I’m addicted to data and data can’t get enough of it.

But with the right data, you actually can, you know, protect your assets but also run them more efficiently. And you have, if you have that opportunity to, you know, in real time to be able to see, hey, you know, someone’s siphoning off the gas or why is truck starting, you know, oh, the battery got took, you know, whatever it might be because there are nefarious people that do all that stuff out there. I hate to say it but as things happen across the world, you know, with The economy and so forth that more and more of these things are going to happen because people are just trying to get by. So having that kind of Big Brother, 10,000-foot looking down at all the assets that you own, the last thing you want to have do is, you know, have a truck full of, you know, pick up a trailer and then all of a sudden they get stuck on the highway because they didn’t realize that the truck was supposed to have a full tank of gas and there’s nothing left of it, you know where I’m coming from. I mean, that happens, right? Absolutely, absolutely does happen. And you know, when you look at fuel, and I’ll talk about both, you know, your regular fuel as well as in the future when we move to an EV world where things become both simpler and harder, and I’ll explain why. But let’s stick to, you know, where we are today, where, you know, vehicles have, you know, regular gas, you need to go to a gas station, pay for the gas, so on and so forth. So as you rightly mentioned, and I and I spoke about it a little in the earlier part, the pilferage of fuel is a big issue, particularly for any kind of fleet because, as you said, there are always going to be people who need money and they probably choose the wrong options on how to get it. We need to protect against that in case, you know, you’re a fleet owner. And as I mentioned, we can regulate and monitor the fuel usage on a real-time basis so we exactly know if somebody is taking out fuel, you know, at any moment of time so you can intervene or, you know, take any actions that are necessary when that red flag goes up.

So that’s one part of it. But even in regular terms, you know, just the usage of the vehicles and how the fuel is being used and utilized, what is the efficiency of the fuel that is being consumed by the vehicles? Most of the fleets that I know of, both commercial as well as non-commercial fleets, generally use a fuel card system. And what that means is, you know, they will give their drivers a card which is replenished by the company on a regular basis and, you know, the guy can basically go to any of the chosen partner stations and, you know, get the vehicle refueled. There are various algorithms that you can use to basically optimize the value of that card because at many times there are stations as well as, you know, gas companies across the United States and across various states who would give specific offers for a time of day. If you go there at that time, you know, you will get a lower cost fuel because, you know, obviously, optimized. So if you can give that information to a commercial fleet of vehicles in real-time, knowing their location and what is the nearest station where the fuel card is worth more for them than the regular one because you can track your tracking the GPS location, you also know how far they are from which station, so you can throw them a very targeted offer and if they go there, you know, everybody makes money and everybody is happy and people are willing to pay for that data. Second way to look at it is if you can see also in real-time that the usage of fuel has suddenly increased and there is nothing nefarious because it’s happening over a period of time, you immediately know that there is a maintenance issue with the vehicle, you know, because the consumption of fuel has gone up significantly or by a percentage and you can set those thresholds, you know, through our software.

It will actually alert you that there is something wrong with the vehicle which needs to be looked into and probably you’re nearing the maintenance cycle for one of the engine parts which is causing an inefficiency on the fuel side. So those are the kind of things which mean a lot, you know, from a total cost of ownership to the fleets. Quickly touching upon and having an insight into the future as you know a Lot of companies eventually intend to build even commercial fleet vehicles which are electrified and in fact, a lot of state governments and even the federal governments are pushing for electrification of the fleets. When the electrification happens eventually, what is going to happen is your vehicle will be running right through, let’s say, eight hours in a day, but the rest of the time, they’ll be plugged in for charging because it will take a lot of time to charge them. Two things are important: how do I optimize the time of charging because you don’t want to miss out on the business that is being kind of lost when they’re not been into the charging station, but also to control the cost of charging. And this is where we come in. You can plug in your vehicle, and again, this holds true for even a retail customer, but also more significantly for fleets. You can plug in your vehicle at any point in the day, but we know, because we have an activity to the National Grid through our partners, what is the time that the National Grid or let’s say a state grid is offering power at the most optimal rates. So you can plug it in at any time, and we will only turn it on when the cost is the lowest. So let’s say if the cost is the lowest between 3 AM and 6 AM in the morning, you can plug it in 6 PM in the evening, but you won’t turn it on. We will only turn it because we know it will only take you three hours to charge it. We will turn it on at 3 AM, and you’ll be done by 6 AM and you’ll save money because it’s the lowest tariff that you have on that electricity chart. The second thing is all of your tolling needs, the e-tolling that happens on the roads, you know, if you’re using a freeway which has tolling on it, all of that would not require any kind of device on the vehicle. You would not need any cameras to be installed right through the highway because we can track the vehicle on a GPS basis, so you don’t need any other kind of tracking. And we are working with certain municipalities to figure out algorithms where they can calculate the tolling just based on that data rather than having to install extensive cameras right through the, you know, right through the highways which can run into, you know, hundreds of miles right.

So that’s a huge cost benefit to the taxpayers and general. It should hopefully lead to lower cost overall for the economy and of course for the fleet owners. No adjunct hardware required, you know, inside the vehicle, and it just makes the fleets more efficient and safer, you know, for them. I live in Georgia, so here in the state, they put in the toll roads, you know, for the high occupancy lanes, the HOV lanes and, yes, but during, you know, peak hours like in the morning during rush hour, it gets jacked up really, really high. But then, you know, let’s say 11 o’clock at night, you know, it’s pennies on the dollar. You don’t need to get in that lane, but you know, it’s all relative and today budgets are tighter than ever because costs have gone up and, but you’re still building that product in your, so you’ve got wherever you can save some money and protect your, like, you know, on the theft side of things like there’s this big wave of people stealing catalytic converters off of cars and trucks because it’s, you know, they can go in and take a catalytic converter, let’s say, off a Honda Civic or a truck, they cut it and they’re in and out of there in a couple of minutes and, and so, and that’s just one thing, you know, and protecting your assets and not only operating your company more efficiently it all adds up in the long run. And let’s say you have 100 trucks if you could save a few becomes both simpler and harder, and I’ll explain why. But let’s stick to where we are today, where vehicles have regular gas. You need to go to a gas station, pay for the gas, so on and so forth. As you rightly mentioned and I spoke about it a little in the earlier part, the pill fridge of fuel is a big issue particularly for any kind of fleet because as you said, there are always going to be people who need money and they probably choose the wrong options on how to get it. We need to protect against that in case you’re a fleet owner and as I mentioned, we can regulate and monitor the fuel usage on a real-time basis so we exactly know if somebody is taking out fuel at any moment of time so you can intervene or take any actions that are necessary when that red flag goes up. So that’s one part of it. But even in regular terms, just the usage of the vehicles and how the fuel is being used and utilized, what is the efficiency of the fuel that is being consumed by the vehicles? Many fleets, both commercial and non-commercial, generally use a fuel card system and what that means is, you know, they will give their drivers a card which is replenished by the company on a regular basis and, you know, the guy can basically go to any of the chosen partner stations and get the vehicle refueled.

There are various algorithms that you can use to basically optimize the value of that card because at many times, there are stations as well as gas companies across the United States and across various states who would give specific offers for a time of day if you go there at that time, you know, you will get a lower cost fuel because, you know, obviously optimized. So if you can give that information to a commercial fleet of vehicles in real time knowing their location and what is the nearest station where the fuel card is worth more for them than the regular one because you can track your, you’re tracking the GPS location, you also know how far they are from which station, so you can throw them a very targeted offer and if they go there, you know, everybody makes money and everybody is happy and people are willing to pay for that data. Second way to look at it is if you can see also in real-time that the usage of fuel has suddenly increased and there is nothing nefarious because it’s happening over a period of time, you immediately know that there is a maintenance issue with the vehicle, you know, because the consumption of fuel has gone up significantly or by a percentage and you can set those thresholds through our software, it will actually alert you that there is something wrong with the vehicle which needs to be looked into and probably you’re nearing the maintenance cycle for one of the engine parts which is causing an inefficiency on the fuel side. So those are the kind of things which mean a lot from a total cost of ownership to the fleets. Quickly touching upon and having an insight into the future, as you know, a lot of companies eventually intend to build even commercial fleet vehicles which are electrified and in fact, a lot of state governments and even the federal governments are pushing for electrification of the fleets. When the electrification happens eventually, what is going to happen is your vehicle will be running right through, let’s say, eight hours in a day, but the rest of the time, they’ll be plugged in for charging because it will take a lot of time to charge them. Two things are important: how do I optimize the time of charging because you don’t want to miss out on the business that is being kind of lost when they’re not been into the charging station, but also to control the cost of charging. And this is where we come in. You can plug in your vehicle, and again, this holds true for even a retail customer, but also more significantly for fleets. You can plug in your vehicle at any point in the day, but we know, because we have an activity to the National Grid through our partners, what is the time that the National Grid or let’s say a state grid is offering power at the most optimal rates.

So you can plug it in at any time, and we will only turn it on when the cost is the lowest. So let’s say if the cost is the lowest between 3 AM and 6 AM in the morning, you can plug it in 6 PM in the evening, but you won’t turn it on. We will only turn it because we know it will only take you three hours to charge it. We will turn it on at 3 AM, and you’ll be done by 6 AM and you’ll save money because it’s the lowest tariff that you have on that electricity chart. The second thing is all of your tolling needs, the e-tolling that happens on the roads, you know, if you’re using a freeway which has tolling on it, all of that would not require any kind of device on the vehicle. You would not need any cameras to be installed right through the highway because we can track the vehicle on a GPS basis, so you don’t need any other kind of tracking. And we are working with certain municipalities to figure out algorithms where they can calculate the tolling just based on that data rather than having to install extensive cameras right through the, you know, right through the highways which can run into, you know, hundreds of miles right. So that’s a huge cost benefit to the taxpayers and general. It should hopefully lead to lower cost overall for the economy and of course for the fleet owners. No adjunct hardware required, you know, inside the vehicle, and it just makes the fleets more efficient and safer, you know, for them. I live in Georgia, so here in the state, they put in the toll roads, you know, for the high occupancy lanes, the HOV lanes and, yes, but during, you know, peak hours like in the morning during rush hour, it gets jacked up really, really high. But then, you know, let’s say 11 o’clock at night, you know, it’s pennies on the dollar. You don’t need to get in that lane, but you know, it’s all relative and today budgets are tighter than ever because costs have gone up and, but you’re still building that product in your, so you’ve got wherever you can save some money and protect your, like, you know, on the theft side of things like there’s this big wave of people stealing catalytic converters off of cars and trucks because it’s, you know, they can go in and take a catalytic converter, let’s say, off a Honda Civic or a truck, they cut it and they’re in and out of there in a couple of minutes and, and so, and that’s just one thing, you know, and protecting your assets and not only operating your company more efficiently it all adds up in the long run. And let’s say you have 100 trucks if you could save a few percentage points in all those trucks, the sum is always greater than the whole, that you can look like a hero at the end of the day, versus just looking at that single unit but looking at them as you know as a fleet that you can actually manipulate the numbers positively in real and know that you know you’re doing the best that you can.

The electrification of vehicles, it’s kind of a catch-22 because you want to go green but can the you know when is the grid going to be able to handle all that like right now that’s right I have a piece of land up on the lake we you know my son’s he works for Boeing that’s I was going to ask you about he it was huge Aerospace that you started it with right okay yeah very very familiar you know I got Aviation on the family so anyway but I have a piece of land up on the lake and we’re building and uh one of the things I’m going to put in is there one of the one of the power units and uh yeah I um uh I was at a roofing show and I saw Tesla have it over there and they had instead of having the metal roof and then the solar panels put on top they actually have the roofing panels with the sensors that are already in there so you don’t have to put those bulkings you still get the tax cut uh you know to use the panels but it’s much more architecturally stimulating but the biggest thing is is that I can generate power just like you guys are you know plugged into the grid with the with the vehicles but when I’m offline if I’ve charged my my cell you know to full capacity I can sell that back to the local power company to give it so that’s right there’s an advantage to me even as a homeowner you know to have that you know to play on the grid and to have it pay for itself so you know saving a few dollars here and there if you have a large Fleet you can actually pay for uh you know the service that you’re providing I you know and the cameras on the trucks and all that you’re so right that if you don’t you know if the highway if the state’s going to build upgrade their highway or put another lane in that’s just one item that they can cross off the off the budget until right correct true true absolutely and also you know in electrification you probably wouldn’t have noticed it but uh you know when you go to the gas station and fill you know your your uh your tank you’re actually paying a percentage which is towards the road tax you know the to the state and the federal government right in case of electrification obviously that won’t happen because nobody is going to the gas station you’re actually charging it most probably at your home or let’s say you know at the facility there are lots or you know the facility so how do you calculate or how do you how does the state earn the road tax that they were earlier collecting from the you know from the fuels you know the the replenishing of the fuel at the station and the answer to that is in real-time we can tell you how much is the vehicle actually driving and hence you can either incentivize.

Or uh you know Levy a certain pair on the uh you know on the electrified Vehicles so that they have to pay uh you know what is justifiably to be paid by them because they’re using the same roads right now some of them are getting away because you know it’s in some states it’s still a percentage of the of the fuel uh you know that you’re replenishing the electric fight Vehicles because of the stops that you may mentioned they’re not paying any road tax actually so you know the load is coming on to all the other vehicles which is kind of unfair but as you rightly said in time uh the entire system I think will be geared up towards electrification and it will be lopsided towards that because there is going to be economies of scale which will come in as as the electrified Vehicles become cheaper the cost of electricity. Hopefully, things will go down, you know, as we move forward and as the fossil fuels costs keep increasing. God knows when that will happen, but it’s bound to happen because it’s a limited resource. And then also in terms of, as you know, particularly for construction fleets and other commercial fleets, getting the carbon credits is going to be a big deal because that will directly influence the amount of taxes that you’re paying on the business that you’re doing. If you can prove via data that we collect and we can give you in a certifiable and an auditable manner as to how many carbon footprints or carbon credits were you able to garner because you were maintaining your vehicles in a much better way, your maintenance cycles were taking care of any anomalies that exist with your vehicles which cause it to be more polluting than others, I think it will save a lot of dollars and put it back into the pockets of the fleet companies and eventually into people’s pockets via, you know, by way of reduced cost of transportation or construction or what have you. The other aspect I didn’t touch upon is equally important, is the health and wellness of the drivers themselves, right? You know, they are an essential cog in the wheel in terms of this entire ecosystem and the economy and how it functions. On one hand, we need to be cognizant of people who have nefarious intents, as we discussed in terms of, you know, just stealing or doing something which is not legal.

But at the same time, you know, many drivers want to do the right thing but they don’t know how. And the examples of that is long-haul drivers or construction fleet drivers who work long hours, many times are stressed out and they don’t realize the mistakes that they’re making in terms of their behavior, whether it is cornering, whether it is acceleration, de-acceleration, getting distracted with a lot of calls, feeling droopy or sleepy, you know, at work, sometimes picking up hitchhikers or strangers on the road which they are not supposed to. Drinking can sometimes be an issue. With our software, you can monitor all of this in real-time because we can track it. Obviously, we are talking about commercial fleets here. It would be a little intrusive if we were talking about our personal vehicles, sure. But when you’re at a job and you’re driving a very expensive piece of machinery, whether it be a truck or any other construction equipment, I think you owe it to your own safety and to your family as well as to the company to be a safe driver and a safe operator. And we can help you to create training modules for those drivers by actually showing them examples of what they were doing wrong as part of every trip or every few days by showing them actually a live video feed of what was the wrong thing that they were doing and proof to them that that was wrong. That helps, obviously, the drivers to become better drivers. At the same time, it helps to reduce insurance premiums because once you are able to do this, then you can prove to the insurance companies, whether it be a Geico or State Farm or Liberty Mutual or what have you, that your drivers are actually becoming better drivers, their driver scores are improving which we have algorithms for, and hence it commands a reduction in the insurance premiums. And I think that’s a huge benefit overall.

Absolutely, your platform, mobile, like if I’m an owner and let’s say I have 20 trucks, I can check in right on my phone and see where truck ABC is at any given correct. Hundred percent, so you can do it. You can log into our web portal, and you can have the full view because obviously the screen is bigger. But we give you, you know, an app-based interface as well, and you can log into that. You can subscribe to any red flags or any kind of signals that you want to come to you, or you can view your whole fleet and where they are or any issues that are occurring with your fleet. So we give both, both those interfaces to our customers.

Let’s talk about the roller coaster over the last three years. You know, March 2020, shut down, no one knew how long it was going to last. Here we are three and a half years later, and we’re still talking about it. We’re basically open, but you know, there’re still lingering effects from, you know, what we’ve all gone through. You know, talk about how your company kind of weathered that storm, and you know, any new services or products that you might have coming up, you know, down the road as we, you know, finish up Q3 and going forward.

Right. So in terms of weathering the storm, it’s kind of interesting because we chose to do it right in the midst of the pandemic. As I said in August of 2020 is when we set up Cerebrum X, and it was a very conscious decision because we knew we are three years into it now. We knew that the two years we are going to take, um, you know, out of that is going to be towards building out our platform. We wouldn’t even go to the market, you know, till we’ve built our platform. And it is an industry first platform from, you know, many points of view. But that was the focus, and hence I think to an extent it was a good thing because we were not pushing to go to market too early because we knew that the market was almost at a standstill anyways because of, uh, because of the tough conditions that existed. So we chose to spend those two years to build out our platform, which was a boon and a disguise because, uh, you know, we had time and we had the talent to do that. We had headquartered in the US, but most of our development from a software point of view happens out of India. That’s why I’m here right now. Um, so that was one part of it. The second part of it is, as I mentioned, there was an extreme realization in the industry in general, both on the OEM side as well as for insurance companies, fleet companies, that it cannot be business as usual now. It has to be something different where you can make the unit economics work for everything, whether it is an insurance premium, whether it is a, you know, that a commercial vehicle is taking or a job you’re signing up for as a commercial fleet. There is an extreme realization that you need the data at the last leaf level of, you know, your operations to figure out how to make them more efficient because, you know, your margins were under extreme pressure.

You had all these vehicles which were incurring mortgage on them, you know, uh, nobody purchases a cash out on the fleet side, so you were incurring a mortgage on these vehicles which were lying idle. So you have to make things work in very tough conditions, and our data helped them in doing that from various points. If you like insurance, uh, I mentioned, then also in terms of the bandwidth usage, some of our customers were able to renegotiate the contracts that they have within AT&T or on a Verizon or T-Mobile, reduce their cost, um, managing and getting the best of talent to manage your vehicles and operate your vehicles obviously is important as well. And hence the training modules help a lot there because, uh, workforce was not easily available. So any means that you can have to train your workforce better in real-time and tell them how to become better drivers and say safer drivers, you know, obviously it was a welcome, you know, welcome case as well from an insurance point of. View, I think from looking a little into the future, I think one thing is very evident, not just in North America but globally: the connected vehicles are going to become the norm. They are almost at a hundred percent in North America. We’re almost at 45 globally, and in two to three years, I see that at least 80 percent of all new vehicles sold will be connected, which means that they’ll be getting a lot of data. There is going to be an extreme move towards electrification, not just because it’s economically viable, but because there is a significant push from various governments and municipalities towards that, particularly on the commercial side. Like I’m talking to you from Delhi, in Delhi, none of the commercial cabs can operate unless they’re hybrid or electrified. So, you know, or have a much more efficient form of fuel rather than regular fossil fuel. So, the larger point I’m making, there will be an extreme push towards electrification. Autonomous driving is going to come into its own, but I feel it will be a little delayed because the infrastructure needs to catch up to it. Because I can imagine North America, you know, coming around to that very quickly. I can imagine Western Europe coming around to it very quickly. But when you talk about economies like China, India, and some of the other Southeast Asian countries, Africa, South America, the infrastructure will take its own sweet time to be geared upwards.

And hence, you know, there will be a mixed kind of traffic where you will have some autonomous driven cars on the road and some manual, which is, according to me, which is the most unsafe environment to be in because you know, you can take care of an environment where everything is driven by software, and you can also gear yourself to take care of an environment where everything is prone to human error. But when you have both things together, I think that’s a very scary kind of an environment because one mistake on either side can be catastrophic, you know, beyond what it is today. So what we’re trying to do is come up with algorithms and come up with analysis which help our customers to deal with all of these trends, whether it be electrification, as I gave a few examples earlier, whether it be the usage of fleets and how the utilization as well as the bandwidth is being used in fleets, or it is to do with autonomous driving because I can give you one example, you know, a lot of cars now have self-parking. I don’t know what car you’re driving, but if you drive a Tesla, for example, you know, you can engage self-parking in the car. But you would also know there have been a lot of cases which are still in the courts where the car was trying to self-park, but it banged into another car. Now, who pays for that, right? Because at that time, the driver was not even probably in the vehicle, although the insurance policy belongs to the end driver, but he or she was never responsible for the damage that was caused to any vehicle because he engaged self-park. That is the litigation that is going on where Tesla is being sued or some other company is being sued to say that they need to pay for it because it was their software.

Now, how we help in all of this is to have a 360-degree view of what was happening with the driver, what was happening with the vehicle, and what was happening outside the vehicle in any crash or collision scenario so that we can recreate it to the best of the ability of current technology. And of course, it will keep enhancing in the future. But to say that what actually happened and who’s liable because that is going to be a big issue as we move into an autonomous-driven environment where, you know, you don’t really know who’s at fault, whether it was actually some error by the owner or the driver, whatever you want to. Call it or the software that was responsible for a certain collision or crash. So, all these things put together, David, you’re heading for a very interesting sea change in how things happen, how they’re measured, and how they’re made sense of from a data point of view. And we’re really excited to be right in the middle of it.

When my son was gonna, he was during the big spike in gas, yeah, he was driving 2005, I think Murr at Boeing. But each day, and it was a limited edition, so it was sucking down the gas, and he was spending all this money. So we looked at it, I sat in Tesla’s at trade shows on the floor, but I had never been in one. So, yeah, we took him for test ride, the self-driving thing blew me away. I mean, the car itself is, it’s an amazing, amazing vehicle. But the guy, yeah, we went to an independent dealer, so he, you know, he knew everything about it, but he said, “Hey, Mr. Corson, you could actually program this car to drive you down to the Atlanta airport, drop you off, and it’ll drive itself back and park itself. The only thing you can’t do is plug itself, you know, you need someone to plug it in to get recharged.” But maybe down the road, like a cell phone when you put it on the thing, maybe there might be a pad that you drive on that will electrify so you won’t even need one of those quick chargers or whatever. Anyway, he ended up buying a truck because, you know, he’s a mechanic, but still, it was an amazing thing. And you got to get used to the self-driving thing. And I never thought about the liability with an accident stuff, so that’s a really good point.

If someone out there, you know, if you know on commercial construction, COP, is watching this episode, and you know, they’re dealing with either, you know, a company that they’re dealing with for fleet technology or the bottom line is that have assets, if they wanted to ask some questions of you and on your technology and so forth, how would they reach out to you to answer some questions?

Yeah, so, me personally, I’ll give out my email address, and you’re happy to, you know, email me. It’s s-u-m-i-t dot c-h-a-u-h-a-n and as in Nancy at cerebrum x c-r-e-b-r-u-m-x dot a-i. So that’s my email address. But also, you can visit our website, which is cerebrumex.ai, and you will see a contact page and a contact email there. If it’s anything related to, you know, technology or customer queries and so on and so forth, I would be involved in some form or manner or somebody in my team would be involved. But if you want to reach out to me personally, I give out my email address, and I’ll be very happy to engage in any conversation there.

Hey, listen, so if you’re out there and you got fleets or you’re working with a contractor that you know that’s got a bunch of fleets and equipment and they want to and and you know that they’re not getting protected and they’re not up on the technology and so forth, have them reach out to, you know, Sumit, and he’ll take care of it. I mean, this is, listen, this is all about budgeting. This is, uh, this is a component, it’s a budget line on your on your project, and if you can save a few, you know, if let’s say you’re retailing, you’re rolling out another 40 stores and you’re thinking about putting charging stations in or you want to have this data, you know, data is addicting. It’s just very powerful. The more you know, the better off you’re going to be and you can make wiser decisions. So if you’re in that mode and you’re thinking about all of these things and you’re looking for, you know, some of the knowledgeable, here’s your man right here, and, you know, reach out to them and hopefully they can help you, you know, get set up and start saving some money and, you know, obviously all the other things that he discussed, you know, having your drivers being safe again in Renault have actors and, you know, and as the world changes, you know, into this electrification that, you know, things are going to change, change is good, uh, sometimes it’s a little bumpy, you know, you gotta, you know, get the quirks out and so forth, but uh.

You know, we’re going in that direction, and um, you know, the self-driving thing with trucks, uh, you know, like here, Yellow Yellow, they just went out of business, 30,000 drivers. But one of the things was that, uh, that I was reading on this whole thing that, uh, they really want to get rid of truck drivers. They want to make it self-driving because that’s the wave of the future, it just is. And, uh, it really hit me, and I was like, “Wow, like my, my, my family’s business, uh, we’ve been in demolition since 1888. It’s like fifth or sixth generation. We have all our own trucks. Now, I don’t know if my cousins are running the company right now, but I don’t know if, if our trucks are, uh, you know, that are, you know, trucking, uh, scrap metal to the, to the, you know, to the shredder and, you know, all that stuff. I don’t know if they’re tracked or not, they probably are, but I’m gonna shoot my cousin an email after this, uh, episode. I’m gonna say, “Hey, Scott, what’s up? Do you, do this thing? You should check this out.” So anyway, and, and like I said, pennies, they all add up, you know, even though, you know, we don’t really use that much of it anymore, you know, coin-wise, but it’s still, it’s still a budget line, and you can shave a few percentage points off at the end of the year. That’s still a savings that you can put towards something else or give your employees a raise or whatever it might be, you know, but if you don’t look at it, you’re not going to be able to have that asset to, uh, you know, to distribute. So if anybody wants to reach me, I’m at davidc at ccrdash-mag.com. Listen, the way that, uh, Sumik got on this, uh, you know, his publicist reached out to me, and, uh, here he is talking about it, you know, I never had a fleet person on here, so, uh, you know, knowledge is power, so if you want to get on here, you know, send me something. I look at everything, we love, we post up all day long, we got all the social media channels. It’s very tough to get in the magazine, but bottomless I look at everything, we will come back to you and we’ll say, “Hey, I’m going to do this or we’re going to post this for you, here’s the URL, you share it, it’s good for our SEO, win-win,” and, uh, let us be the, you know, the judge. Don’t judge a book by a cover. We like personnel announcements, new products, uh, you know, anniversaries, you know, new rollouts, all that kind of stuff, and I just don’t post construction, I put all sorts of stuff, how to buy a car, what’s the best insurance to have. I even have stuff on how to buy hair extensions. Half by circulation is female, so even if you guys went out there that wanted to put their hair extension on, you could do that too. I have that copy on there on the site, so we post all sorts of stuff, you know, before the roller coaster started, it was that basically all construction, but one of the things I found out during the last three and a half years that there’s more to life work. So I put all this other stuff out there because we’re all when you’re not working you’re looking at all these other things considerate so um you know as we close up here you know if you wanted to uh uh leave one thought or positive thought or phrase with our listeners out there what would it be?

Well, I would say that the future is definitely bright, uh, not just because we’re moving to River towards electrification and also autonomous driving but future is extremely bright for the industry in general because what people have realized initially during the tough years the sales fell down, you know, for all vehicles if you but if you look at the sales in the latter part of that crisis, we were in, they actually took off because people started realizing that they actually like driving they actually like being in the same vehicle with their families and driving out the circumstances almost dictated that you do that because you were trying to stay away from a lot of uh, uh, you know, uh, you know, Transportation Moves Like Trains and so on and so forth you didn’t want to be in that environment yeah mass transit yeah the future is bright because from our point of view data is in on your side you hold the the keys to the to the kingdom so to speak because it’s your data it belongs to the end consumer you can demand what people can do with that data who gets that data and what value does it bring back to you and only then you need to share that data with.

You and I think that’s the brightest spot for all of us. Digitization brings the command back to you irrespective of what people say about privacy and so on and so forth. I think it puts the control back in your hands in terms of how you want to control your data and what you can get out of your own data. Listen, I’m right there with you. Listen, I was a print face-to-face guy three years ago and uh 100 digital and I can’t get enough of that. I’ve taken three boot camps on digital marketing and uh funnels and TikTok and all the stuff that I’m doing, and you’re gonna start seeing that stuff on my website, and uh, it’s just amazing what you can do, uh, you know, with technology today that can streamline autonomous technology. I can’t get enough of it. I mean, last night I got done with my class, I told my wife, I’m like, “You’re not gonna believe it, I just saw this software program that can do that will save me so much time and I didn’t even know it was out there on the web.” So the future is probably I’m definitely look, the glass is half full, not half empty, and uh, you know, just give me more data, send me stuff, I want to look at it, you know, let me be the judge. So a couple things before we uh sign off uh, number one, I really appreciate the conversation, thank you so much, uh, everybody out there that’s watching this, hey, hey, hit the like button, we want to get the algorithms out there so you know you can find out about uh, Sumik and his platform with Fleet technology and what he can do, uh, it helps us get found, uh, you know on YouTube and you know out there on the Wawa West of the web. Uh, second thing is always if you’re on a construction site, be safe once you get home to see your kids and your family and then get up and do it all the next day, all right, and thirdly it’s still the dog days of summer here in the states so it’s very very hot so don’t think that oh you know the Summer’s almost over look you gotta drink water put some of those electrolytes in your water bottle make sure that you stay hydrated because dehydration headaches up you don’t want to go through it and I know I always say that but the bottom lies we want you to be safe and we want you to be you know on this construction site doing your best and if you’re dehydrated you know that’s when mistakes happen so make sure you stay safe and drink lots of water so uh with that said um to me pleasure to meet you uh hopefully I’ll get to meet you when you get back into the states here one of these times absolutely lunch and you can go show me what your you know your fleets and you know I’d like to see it up front and close that would be awesome absolutely uh for all you out there in commercial construction coffee talk land listen it’s the weekend TGIF go enjoy the weekend recharge your battery uh clear your mindset stay positive don’t negativity get rid of it it’s just it’s not worth it you know spend your spend your time with positive people and uh by all means you know you know don’t work this weekend enjoy yourself and you know so you can get ready and have a productive week uh next week um so so me say goodbye from India goodbye and thank you for having me again and I’m going to sign off from uh Sugar Hill Georgia which is about 30 miles north of Atlanta right below the Beaufort Dam on Lake Lanier uh which has over 600 miles of Coastline and uh and I’m sure it’s uh it’s starting to clear up and I’m sure the lake got some water this morning because it was pouring so with that said everybody have a great weekend great a couple weeks coming up you got Labor Day then you got you know the usual you got thinking you got a Halloween you got Thanksgiving a grand boy you know we’re going to be closing this year out it’s going to be here before you know it uh so with that said we’re gonna sign off and we will see you next time on another episode of commercial construction Coffee Talk thoroughly enjoy the conversation with me all right travel back all right thank you take care.