“I always been passionate of improving road safety and we were thrust into action by the tragic death of a schoolmate earlier this year. My friend and his brother were killed in a road accident, and I still remember how inconsolable the mother was when burying her two sons. Malaysia has an average of more than 6,800 deaths caused by road accidents from 455,000 accidents each year – statistics by Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (MIROS).” said Koh Mui Han, CEO of DraVA
“Shanmuga Pillaiyan (DraVA CTO) and I came together to develop an app to provide insights to drivers on their own driving behavior. This was based on our belief that people can’t improve if they don’t know what they are doing wrong. In the corporate world, we always have this saying, “you can only control what you measure”.
DraVA app will be able to detect and record dangerous driving behaviors such as exceeding speed limits, hard breaking, abrupt swerving and etc. The system also analyses driving habits such as usual routes taken and driving time to assess risky driving habits. All these data are then consolidated into the DraVA Safety Score, which indicates how safe a person drives.
DRaVA’s key technology lies in the proprietary machine learning algorithms developed to accurately detect drivers’ behavior. The robustness of this technology allows DraVA to be fully app based as compared to other competitors who rely on hardware devices. Special attention was also given to the user interface design to make it as user friendly as possible.
A primary target market for DraVA would be parents with teenage drivers. The app has a mentor-mentee function where by parents can monitor the driving habits of their teenage drivers. With factual data, parents can coach their children to become safer drivers early on, so that safe driving habits are inculcated.
In September 2016, DraVa participated in the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) Fintech Bootcamp that was jointly organized by i-Train (M) Sdn. Bhd. They are amongst the 20 finalists selected to showcase our startups at the upcoming Fintech Bootcamp Demo Day on 15th December 2016. The Fintech Bootcamp presented DraVA with great networking opportunities with other budding fintech startups in Malaysia and industry experts from the region.
The next step for DraVA is to launch our first release on Google Play Store in January 2017. This will be followed by our nationwide road safety awareness campaigns. We are currently seeking corporate partners that would like to champion road safety as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program.
DraVA plans to market customized motor insurance policies by mid 2017, so that they can incentivize their users for their safe driving behaviours. They are also seeking partnership with Malaysian insurance companies to develop custom auto insurance policies utilizing the DraVA Safety Score.
“DraVA’s vision is to improve road safety by leveraging cutting edge technology and rewarding safe drivers with lower automobile insurance premiums. Safer drivers should pay less for insurance premiums!”
This article was first published on fintechnews.sg, Featured Image via pixabay
