September 2024 – When an Impossible Idea September 2024 – When an Impossible Idea Took Us Back to the RoadsTook Us Back to the Roads

Some ideas begin with a market opportunity.

Some begin with a customer requirement.

And then there are ideas where almost everyone around you says:

“This cannot be done.”

For us, building what we envisioned as India’s first ANPR-based system integrated with actual FASTag-linked financial deduction felt exactly like that.

The idea sounded simple when explained in one sentence:

A vehicle comes, the number plate is automatically identified, the system verifies the vehicle, the applicable amount is deducted digitally, and the vehicle moves ahead without stopping.

Simple to explain.

Extremely difficult to execute.

And September 2024 became less about sitting in an office and building technology, and more about going back to where the TruckSuvidha journey had originally started.

The road.

The Dream Was Simple – No Vehicle Should Have to Stop

Our thought process had been developing for quite some time.

FASTag had already demonstrated that digital financial transactions could become part of highway infrastructure.

ANPR technology could identify vehicles using their registration numbers.

So we started asking ourselves:

Why can’t these two worlds work together?

Why should a vehicle have to stop for a transaction if technology can identify it while it is moving?

And if toll collection could work this way, could the same infrastructure eventually support other use cases?

The opportunity looked enormous.

But the deeper we went, the more challenges we discovered.

Technology Was Only One Part of the Problem

Initially, ANPR looked primarily like a technology problem.

Install cameras.

Read the registration plate.

Identify the vehicle.

Connect the required systems.

Process the transaction.

Done.

But transportation does not work in such a controlled environment.

Real roads started throwing real questions at us.

• What happens when a number plate is dirty?
• What happens when a plate is damaged?
• What happens when someone deliberately hides part of the registration number?
• What happens when a commercial vehicle is running without a properly readable plate?
• What if the camera reads an 8 as a B?
• Or a 0 as an O?
• What happens at night?
• What happens during rain, fog or poor visibility?
• What happens when two vehicles are moving very close to each other?

And most importantly, if an actual financial transaction is involved:

What happens if the wrong vehicle is identified?

Suddenly, accuracy was not just a technology KPI.

It had a financial consequence.

Then Came the Legal and Operational Questions

Technology was only the beginning.

There were regulatory questions.

Banking questions.

FASTag ecosystem requirements.

Infrastructure requirements.

Operational processes.

Dispute management.

Reconciliation.

Vehicle verification.

Exception handling.

Security.

And several other layers that become visible only when you try to take an idea from a presentation to the ground.

It made us realize something important.

Innovation in infrastructure cannot happen inside a software development room alone.

You need to understand technology.

You need to understand finance.

You need to understand regulation.

But most importantly, you need to understand the road.

And Suddenly, It Felt Like 2012 Again

This phase unexpectedly took us back more than a decade.

When the idea of TruckSuvidha was being shaped around 2012, we did not begin by sitting in an office and assuming what transporters needed.

We went outside.

We met transporters.

We visited transport hubs.

We spoke with truck owners and drivers.

We observed how loads were booked.

We understood how trucks were placed.

We saw how much of the industry operated through phone calls, diaries, relationships and trust.

That ground research eventually became one of the foundations on which TruckSuvidha was built.

More than a decade later, technology had completely changed.

The problem was different.

The ecosystem was different.

Even we were different.

But the method remained surprisingly similar.

Go to the ground.

Back to the Same Roads, With Different Questions

So the research started again.

We started meeting people.

Understanding infrastructure.

Studying actual vehicle movement.

Looking at number plates.

Understanding lane behaviour.

Exploring camera positioning and reading accuracy.

Studying the rules.

Discussing possibilities with different stakeholders.

Understanding what could go wrong before thinking about what could go right.

Earlier, we had travelled these roads trying to understand how to connect trucks with loads.

Now we were travelling them trying to understand how a moving vehicle could interact with digital infrastructure without stopping.

That feeling was special.

The company had grown.

The technology had changed.

The problems had evolved.

But once again, the road became our classroom.

“It Cannot Be Done”

During this journey, we heard different versions of the same response.

It will be difficult.

There are too many exceptions.

Financial transactions make it complicated.

ANPR cannot guarantee everything.

There are regulatory challenges.

There are operational challenges.

People can manipulate number plates.

What if the wrong vehicle gets charged?

And many of those concerns were completely valid.

But “difficult” and “impossible” are two very different things.

We were not trying to ignore the challenges.

We wanted to understand every one of them.

Because if the system was going to involve actual financial deductions, being approximately correct was not enough.

It had to be reliable.

It had to be secure.

It had to have checks and balances.

And it had to work in Indian road conditions.

Being First Is Not About Announcing First

Another lesson became very clear during this period.

Everyone likes saying they are building something “first.”

But being first is not about making the first announcement.

It is about being willing to solve the problems nobody has solved yet.

The glamour is in the announcement.

The innovation is in everything that happens before it.

The failed tests.

The wrong readings.

The operational discussions.

The documentation.

The permissions.

The integrations.

The edge cases.

The disagreements.

And the hundreds of small corrections required before something can actually work.

That was the phase we had entered.

Startup Lesson – When Technology Gets Complicated, Go Back to the Ground

September reminded us of one of the earliest lessons from the TruckSuvidha journey.

When you don’t understand the problem completely, leave the meeting room and go where the problem actually exists.

Talk to people.

Watch the process.

Understand the exceptions.

Question your assumptions.

Then come back and build.

More than a decade ago, that approach helped us understand India’s trucking industry.

Now it was helping us understand the next generation of digital road infrastructure.

We still had challenges ahead.

Technical challenges.

Financial challenges.

Operational challenges.

Regulatory challenges.

And probably several challenges we had not even discovered yet.

But that is exactly what makes building something new exciting.

In 2012, we went to the roads looking for problems worth solving.

In 2024, we were back on those roads again.

This time, we were trying to make sure that someday, vehicles themselves would not have to stop there.