Bonus Buddy
Solutions

Bonus Buddy Solutions (Pty) Ltd is a South African company that has positioned itself using blockchain – the world’s most important emerging technology with a less technologically advanced industry – that of the haulage of heavy goods to help them reduce fuel consumption by 20%.

The company was founded by one of South Africa’s most innovative electrical engineers, Alexandria Township-based scientist, Thabiso Sekhoto. Sekhoto has successfully developed a wide range of electrical hardware such as meteorological sensors, vehicle tracking systems, an automatic teller machine and the Standard Bank Blue mobile payments system.

Sekhoto’s success has enabled him to develop a reputation within technology circles as one of the country’s best innovation and embedded software engineers.

Thabiso studied Electronics Engineering at Tshwane University of Technology before becoming an embedded hardware and integrated software developer. After working for Stephen Larkin between 2005 and 2009 creating mine fleet tracking systems, he has since started his own company where he has become a respected provider of innovation solutions. Apart from committing to projects that ANE has awarded him, he has created weather sensor solutions for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the most used mobile phone payments system in South Africa called Standard Bank Blue and a stand alone automatic teller machine specifically designed to deal with the security risks, literacy challenges and electricity intermittency. He has 15 years of experience as an innovation engineer where he has been involved in the development of telemetry systems, banking systems as well as fleet management and meteorological sensor systems. 

These include:

• A highly visual dashboard monitor that uses the vehicle telematics to incentivise safety, energy efficient driving habits of long distance haulage truck drivers;
• Integration with existing sensors and two independent GPS trackers to feed software designed to change driving habits that games drivers operate more safely in a way that causes them to use fuel more efficiently (opportunity – 10% of savings – targeted with 6% targeted);
• A fuel theft reconciliation system that integrates two fuel tank sensors (tank level and input flow) with fuel pumped into the station from fuel depots. (opportunity – 10% of savings with 6% targeted);
• Tyre pressure monitoring – where a 3% fuel saving is targeted
• Iterative improvements on a CGON hydrolysis system, developed in 2017 by ANE, where water is hydrolysis into its elemental components of oxygen and hydrogen and the hydrogen is fed into the internal combustion chamber. This revolutionary new system has the added benefits of not storing the hydrogen it generates and reducing noxious emissions. A 6% saving has proved to be possible with a study on Eddie Stobart in the UK – 5% is targeted.

With these four interventions, Bonus Buddy plans to assist ANE in its objective to help larger trucks to save 20% of their fuel bill, which in turn will on average be worth an estimated £10k per year.

The company plans to build a network of devices as the considerable overhead of running these services will be spread over a larger volume. It estimates a £12 million investment over a 3 year period where it plans to invest in systems on over 3,000 trucks.

Based on the above assumptions, the business will generate a fuel savings of £37 million. 50% will be retained by the customer and it is expected that 20% of the savings will be required to provide the monitoring, analysis and onsite support services required to achieve with a gross profit of 30%. Net profit is estimated at £4.5 million based on the model assumptions.