Kiwis behind Nepal recovery effort
Two Waikato men are behind technology at the heart of the Nepal recovery effort.
Brothers Kylan and Bevan Diprose are the founders of v2track, the business that developed a nifty piece of technology allowing aviation companies to keep tabs on aircraft, get alerts when things are going wrong, and communicate with pilots should the need arise.
The pair started the company nine years ago when Kylan Diprose, a pilot, realised his cellphone had coverage even in remote parts of Australia during flights.
He began to wonder whether he could track flights via cellphone networks, instead of the much more expensive satellite tracking normally used.
The lower cost would make it possible to offer more frequent updates, of roughly 15 seconds, resorting only to satellite’s roughly two minute updates when cellphone coverage cut out.
Physics graduate Bevan Diprose jumped onboard to build some software, and eventually a prototype tracker, while Kylan Diprose- also a web developerbuilt a website from which the information could be viewed.
Before the pair knew it, Kylan’s trials in Australia had caught the eye of a customer needing an efficient and reliable way to track aircraft.
Word of mouth saw demand steadily grow, and Bevan Diprose says the technology is now in Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, East Timor, Nepal, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Spain, Tanzania, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
He says the extensive list of developing countries among that list didn’t happen on purpose.
‘‘Often those poorer countries, they can’t afford to put fixed lines in so everyone puts cellphone towers in so you might actually have a really poor country and really good cellphone coverage, and usually it’s really cheap,’’ says Bevan Diprose.
‘‘That lends itself to our technology because those markets are a little bit more cost sensitive.’’
v2track is also being used by roughly 90 per cent of the helicopter companies involved in Nepal’s recovery effort. Bevan Diprose says word of mouth was important, but also the need for tracking stipulated by international aid organisations, like the United Nations, who put forward some of the funding.
‘‘The need for a lot of rescues in a short time...they needed to know a lot more about where [pilots] were and what they were doing,’’ he says.
On top of that, says Kylan Diprose, the civil aviation authorities were pushing for safe flight operations, and were backing v2track as a reliable option for aircraft operators.
The growth – in developing countries too – will see the pair add to their team over the next few months, and grow their agent base around the world.