History

In November 2000 Simon Derry, the TrackaPhone founder and CTO, applied through competitive tender to Vodafone to receive their location data feed, that allowed him to provide a commercial offering for Location Based Services (LBS). Simon’s submission was one of only 10 to be chosen to receive the feed, and he spent the next two years developing the LBS platform in a part-time capacity, whilst working as a freelance software consultant.

In late 2002 Simon formed TrackaPhone and began working full time on developing the platform. At that time Phil Derry, Simon’s father, joined as full time Chairman/CEO and Alan Davidson as Finance Director. TrackaPhone was the first LBS Company to sign formal contracts with the mobile networks and is now the only LBS provider with direct feeds from the mobile networks. 

Phil Derry sat on the steering committee that brought about the codes of practice that protect peoples location privacy.  TrackaPhone is a signatory to these codes which were published in September 2004.  These codes were originally written for cell id technology but whatever location technology TrackaPhone are using they adhere to these codes.

 In November 2003 TrackaPhone went live with its services and began selling Lone Worker Protection and Management systems directly and through telecoms resellers. Since then the company has grown to over two hundred customers utilising various devices on multiple networks globally.

TrackaPhone has won contracts with 30 UK Police Forces, various local governments, Scottish Executive, Docklands Light Railway, BA, TJX Europe, Nexus (many others) and over one hundred and fifty SMEs. 

In June 2005 Martin Worth joined as Business Development Director.  Martin has extensive sales and marketing experience with Philips, The Dixon Group, Palm and Vodafone.

David Leadbitter joined at the same time as TrackaPhone’s National Sales Manager. David has been in sales for over 18 years with 6 years at Vodafone specialising in vehicle tracking and telemetry accounts.

The “engine room” of the business is run by Chris Davidson and Christine Horsefield who manage all the company’s customers and look after all operational matters and post sales matters.  Due to TrackaPhone’s resilience the company receives very few support calls.   However, this department will grow as our customer base demands helping them to run their businesses safer, more securely and more efficiently.

The TrackaPhone team of 8 has been together for 5 years supporting steady stable growth with the company now showing marginal profitability.   The company’s service and technology have been upgraded continuously and it now delivers its services globally which our UK customers are taking advantage of.  We now have interest from foreign resellers, such as network providers, to deliver our technology to their customers. Currently we host our technology but we are moving towards providing a package of API’s for customers to build their own platforms.  Developments  are also in hand enabling TrackaPhone to integrate exciting new location technologies underpinning its global offering. 

The Company raised equity finance in 2006, 2007 & 2009 totalling £900k.  These monies were used to finance the development of the technology and develop marketing strategies that the company believes will give it steady profitable growth. David Linell FCA has recently joined the company as FD, and James Hawkes-Reed has joined us as Installations Manager.  Further recruitment is expected as the company continues to grow.