If you were to travel back in time just 10 years ago, small and medium car rental businesses looked radically different. Heavily reliant on paper documents and excel spreadsheets, for many businesses in the industry, it was a constant struggle to manage their fleets. Recognizing these challenges, Navotar stepped in and developed a solution focusing on SME Car Rentals using cutting edge technology.
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Today, Navotar’s cloud-based car rental software, which is known for being economical and easy to use is trusted by 1000+ rental businesses in 70+ countries. With its parent company in Canada, Navotar also operates a development and marketing hub in Sri Lanka, which has been a crucial component of its operations and global journey of growth. Following Navotar’s acquisition by Valsoft, the company is now poised for even greater growth.
The origins of Navotar
For 10+ years, Navotar has been providing solutions for the automotive industry. It has since become a technology leader in car rental software solutions. As the industry evolved, the company recognized the many issues faced by auto rental companies. Recognizing an opportunity, its founders built the initial version in a short time and quickly took it to market. Over the years, the platform saw steady adoption in the market.
CEO of Navotar, Sanker Shivanathan credits much of this success to the company having a strong customer-centric focus. While deeply ingrained into the company’s DNA today, it didn’t happen overnight without a struggle. Much of its support team is based in Sri Lanka, which works 24/7. “Back when we first started, there were only a handful of us. We’d set alarms for meetings at 2 AM and demos at 4 AM. It was a constant struggle. Having overcome those hardships and scaling our operations, we were able to build a larger team to better serve our customers,” says Director of Business Development at Navotar, Visharathan Kugamoorthy reflecting on the journey.
A reliable partner enabling rental companies to grow
Since its inception, Navotar has come a long way. The cloud-based fleet management software has evolved considerably since it’s initial iterations. Today, Navotar supports rental businesses of all kinds. Whether its cars, vans, scooters or even boats, the platform is easily adaptable to the unique needs of any rental company. While crucial, fleet management is merely scratching the surface of how the company supports rental companies.
Beyond fleet management, the company supports its clients with a range of services. From website development to digital marketing, its Sri Lankan team helps its clients with everything they need for growth. “By offering these services Navotar is a one-stop solution to start the car rental business” states Visharathan.
Towards continuously supporting its customers, Navotar has been constantly experimenting with new technologies. “Our customers were very pleased with some of our innovative experiments like when we introduced mobile apps. But we’ve had our fair share of misses too. Still, they reinforced the trust our customers have placed in us to adapt to change. That’s why we continue to invest in exploring how new technologies can support all aspects of vehicle rentals,” stated Sanker.
While experimenting with new technologies, the company also looks at new ways of offering customer support. Returning to its dedication towards customer service, the company gives its clients the freedom to communicate through any medium they prefer. Handled primarily by its Sri Lankan team, Visharathan elaborated on this saying, “Being a startup, the key to success was providing premium support to all the customers with every possible support channel.” These efforts have greatly paid off with Navotar receiving the award for Best Support by SoftwareSuggest in 2019, which is one of many accolades the company has received.
Moving forward with Valsoft
Since its inception, Navotar has worked towards creating a strong rental management solution for car rental companies. Of course, the road hasn’t been an easy one. The company has overcome many challenges over the years. Largely through the efforts of its dedicated team in Sri Lanka empowering rental companies with everything they need to grow their businesses.
Having overcome these challenges to build a global presence, both Sanker and Visharathan stated that their mission is to make it easier for anyone to enter the rental industry. Towards this goal, the company has now embarked on the next step on this journey. Valsoft Corporation, a Candian-based company specializing in building vertical market software companies, has acquired Navotar.
Valsoft’s car rental portfolio operated by Aspire Software, will see the entire Navotar management team join the company and continue offering the company’s customers stellar service and innovative solutions. Commenting on the acquisition, CEO of Aspire Software, Michael Assi said, “We are thrilled to welcome the Navotar team, clients and partners to the Aspire Software family. The team and culture are well aligned with our values, which has also made this transaction seamless. We could not be prouder to have Navotar join our car rental portfolio.”
Praising Valsoft’s hands-off approach to supporting its teams, Sanker commented on the acquisition saying, “Unlike typical VC firms, Valsoft believes in working with the existing employees and management and empowering them with the tools needed to accelerate their growth. With Valsoft, we firmly believe that our growth has been accelerated considerably by many years.”
Visharathan added, “By joining Valsoft, we shall reach many new markets which will help us to strengthen and scale our product and brand. This acquisition is a great next step in the future of our company. We believe this acquisition will unlock the great potential of Navotar to empower our customers, partners and colleagues.”
