Asset & Fleet Management

•

Nairobi, Kenya

An IoT-based ecosystem to track and manage in-field assets – batteries, bikes & swapping stations - with real-time data

SERVICES WE OFFERED

Ideation

UI/UX Design

On-Ground Consultancy

Backend Development

Frontend Development

Database Development

Infrastructure Development

IoT Service

Quality Assurance

The requirement.

Our client Mazi Mobility, a VC-funded electric bike company based in Nairobi, intends to build the largest ecosystem of electric vehicles and swapping stations across Africa. The business model turns around the idea that traditional methods of charging batteries are time consuming and that customers would rather easily swap an empty battery for a freshly charged one in no time across a dense network of stations.

Mazi’s growth is mostly, if not exclusively, dependent on its capacity to scale operations rapidly while drastically reducing its operational cost across functions. Mazi is a complex IoT challenge. IoT here is about providing real-time data from a multitude of connected devices – batteries, swap stations, and bikes – to create complete visibility over an entire ecosystem, track assets, verify health and availability, and optimise logistics & decisions over the operations, for each stakeholder involved, be it their riders, employees, or the management itself.

From our first interactions itself with Mazi’s CEO Jesse Forrester, we realised that from a bird’s eye view he knew exactly the impact that technology had to have on his business at scale and what the larger vision was in its introduction into Mazi’s operational flow. As our visions aligned, Antarctica was commissioned to build the foundations of a scalable and proprietary IoT software ecosystem for Mazi Mobility.

Solving for Sustainable Cities & Communities and more.

Every project that we take up is aligned to one or more of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

SDG #7

Affordable & Clean Energy

SDG #9

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

SDG #11

Sustainable Cities & Communities

SDG #13

Climate Action

How we did it.

What we really care for when we build custom software for a client is to understand thoroughly how they operate. Proprietary operations command proprietary software and we therefore started with a series of interactions to understand the sequence of events of various business scenarios. In broad terms, Mazi sells bikes and owns batteries. Batteries are either on a bike or in a swap station and a continuous slew of interconnections exist between these three asset entities.

This equation led us to 1) draw a mind-map to clearly visualise the web of relationships 2) create an information architecture out of a complex operating workflow 3) transform it into a standardised design style, with reusable components, consistency and familiarisation through interactive mockups and clear development files. Our development team pushed the boundaries of Antarctica’s speed by coding out an end-to-end frontend in just 4 working days. As for the backend, and specifically for IoT real-time metrics from every bike, every battery and every swap station to come into the application, Antarctica was reliant on Mazi’s team responsible for installing the same on each asset. The moment anything was connected, the team at Antarctica would ingest those into the software. This entire effort required advance planning, complete transparency, task ownership and team collaboration to execute successfully.

We launched in a record time of under 14 weeks, with zero bugs on the board on the day of launch.

Point 1

We ingested tons of real-time IoT data.

Point 2

We broke down a complex operating workflow.

Point 3

Every phase deadline was either met or beaten.

Setting the pace

Considering that the Mazi software team was also being formed through the course of this project with us, implementing an efficient software development life cycle that would last over time involved very early on in our collaboration our commitment to continuously educate and imbibe a culture of fast, agile, accurate development. We followed exceptional standards of development & deployed a strong, secure and scalable infrastructure that is now set as a process benchmark in the company.

On-Ground Ideation

The Antarctica Team operated successful on-site visits in Nairobi to establish a bridge with the real-sensor world and to eradicate dependencies. These visits bring tremendous value to a project, by clarifying further the software’s implementation context, the on-ground business activities and to expand both team’s collective understanding of how stakeholders use the software. These visits are a condition to excellence, especially in the context of IoT.

Remote Deployment

We deployed remotely the most reliable, scalable and automated pipeline-based infrastructure we ever created for a client. The week that preceded it was scheduled with a detailed agenda of every minor and major event, such as the creation of the UAT environment, the fit and finish testing and the last sanity checks on the production environment. We ended up with 0 bugs on go-live day and smiles on everyone's faces. We then handed over every piece of intellectual property ever created for Mazi, including the technical & API documentation, an infrastructure solutions manual and every last piece of the cloud-based puzzle.

Frosty the Penguin Selfie of Antarctica Global the Custom Software Development Company

The impact it had.

Mazi Mobility today has one unified platform for all their bikes and batteries information allowing fleet managers to monitor all their vehicles in one easy-to-view dashboard consisting of multiple modules. All assets are visible geographically along with in-depth statistics and lists containing all collected information and attributes, such as temperature, speed, battery health etc.

Mazi Mobility owns the intellectual property of this software. They own a product that embraces their operations. They own the database structure and every piece of data generated on the platform. The level of control that Mazi now possesses sets them up with an infinitely stronger base for the future than its competitors who buy off-the-racks non-proprietary solutions like Odoo. These almost-but-not-open-source solutions charge you fees and licences that increase as you grow. You are bound by the provider’s rules, their disclaimers, their terms and their conditions. You don’t own your database therefore you don’t own your data. You own an illusion of it and migrating to another software ecosystem may turn out to be very difficult. Mazi Mobility eradicated entirely this dependency to third-party providers.

Keeping aside these perspectives, the immediate impact since going live is the considerable amount of data being collected across assets on a real-time basis. Operationally, this central cockpit brings greater accountability across functions. Customers enjoy more convenience from the Mazi support team being able to act remotely. Strategically, this unlocks various future milestones, such as measuring rider behaviours, figuring out the root cause of operational inefficiencies and helping make more informed decisions at a company level.

Fascinating times.

We feel a profound gratitude for having such projects come our way and that motivates us even more to beat all odds.

Our team

4 developers, 2 designers, 1 tester & a PM.

14 weeks

We completed all this in a matter of just 14 weeks .

1 commitment

Our heart and soul from vision to deployment.

The tech stack we chose.

There is a reason why we set our standards so high: adaptability, efficiency, scalability.

Discover our tech stack

What the client had to say!

We have yet to experiment with various industries but we’re skilled enough to take risks and keep our good reputation going!

It's been such a great opportunity working with Antarctica. Mathieu and Kumail's professionalism, the way they've been able to deliver a project as complex as what we've had in 14 weeks has been nothing short of remarkable. I would really like to recommend them to any startups thinking about Antarctica as your development partner. They've been really good friends, and most of all, they've done a really excellent job.

Jesse Forrester

CEO, Mazi Mobility