AlertMe Business Plan

Ashay Athalye, CEO

Pranav Nagalamadaka, CFO
Anirudh Kaushik, COO
Agastya Sharma, CMO
Sanket Panda, CTO

Executive summary
Our product, AlertMe, is for students and families who are dissatisfied with not knowing
exactly when their bus will arrive. Our product is a school bus tracking service that provides
real-time location data for each bus, allowing students to optimize their morning schedule,
making them more prepared for school. It also provides parents with the knowledge of when
their child will arrive home, ensuring their peace of mind.
Company Overview
Our company is called AlertMe. We are a partnership company formed in December
2013, with the major shareholders being the five founders and bus companies. We are currently
based in Central Massachusetts, and we plan to expand to all of New England and eventually
cover the United States.

Mission Statement
AlertMe is a company dedicated to making students more prepared for school and
keeping them safer in the mornings while they wait to board the school bus. We understand that

many students are pressed for time in the morning to get ready, and the challenges of getting
more sleep grow exponentially as students progress from elementary school to high school.
Furthermore, we help prevent students from acquiring sickness as a result of being exposed to
inclement weather unnecessarily, and also prevent kidnappings and other dangers from students
being forced to wait outside alone. Our goal is to provide the millions of students in the US a
means to know the precise time a school bus will arrive at their home so that they can utilize
their waiting time more effectively to eat, do homework, or get more sleep, all of which make
them feel healthy because of health benefits, better prepared for school because of more rest and
nutrition, and more safe in the mornings by reducing the time they stand outside alone.
Goals
Our goals are for our service to be available to all students in the US who take the bus to
school. Thus are goals are for the company are to grow it big and expand across the United
States. Our exit strategy for ourselves and for our investors is to sell our technology and
infrastructure to a larger company who shares our purpose and who can take the idea to fruition.
Eventually, we could even expand to other countries, which utilize a school bus transportation
system. The immediate goals are outlined in more detail in the market entry strategy.

Products and Services

AlertMe is an incredible asset for parents and students who utilize school bus transport to
and from school. Our product allows students in the morning for extra time to get ready, a
healthy breakfast, and a general ease of mind. With this product, we can prevent students and
parents missing the school bus or leaving behind a late bus, by simply knowing where the bus is.
AlertMe is a notification system between users and drivers that responds to user prompt and
alerts them of the location of the bus. Our user base will be comprised of students and their
parents of supported schools. Our product is unique due to the fact that we offer our service to
show estimated time arrival for our buses and their current location for students. But our usage of
low-cost hardware and a zero overhead scripting function allows us for the possibility of
incredible margins. Along with this, a partnership with a bus company will allow for distribution
channels and increase a mass adoption rate. This system of delivery with scripting allows us

currently to serve on a multi-platform basis, on any mobile operating system. AlertMe will be a
one time cost of $20 for a display module, and then follow a subscription basis for $5 per month.

Currently, our primary competition is AT&T, with their tracking service that allows for
GPS tracking and Transfinder. AT&T technology can be used to track school buses, but costs too
much to implement, maintain, and also raises the price of the hardware so high, that they cannot
sustain in a market for students. Transfinder, a company in the same market space, also costs too
much that students and parents cannot afford due to their high-end driver hardware. We feel that
we should put more emphasis on the user side of the business, rather than the driver hardware,
which allows us to preserve a higher margin rate and lower maintenance cost and overhead.

The product is in its alpha test phase, which is on one bus only as a test. Currently in
development, we are using the alpha test bus as both a chance to debug our product, but also to
introduce and market it. The next stage, the beta phase, involves one school of buses to
experience the managing of multiple buses. Then, rolling out of beta, AlertMe will expand to
cover multiple schools in multiple states. At the moment, our primary obstacles are to provide a
GUI application for ease of access, and also correcting ETA functions.

Industry and Market Analysis

Industry Analysis
The industry we are entering, the education industry, is a fast-growing industry valued at
$1 trillion in the United States. The industry is defined by the number of entrepreneurs, private
businesses and schools that are dedicated to improving the education and school experience for
students. The education industry is one that is being funded and regulated heavily by the
government, as 79% of the schools in the US are public schools. According to a PISA (Program
for Student International Assessment) test administered across 65 nations in 2012, The United
States scores have dropped approximately three positions in ranking, exhibiting the dire need for

reformation of the education industry. The United States federal government has increased
funding for education from $53.19 billion in 2009 to $107.6 billion in 2012. The growth in
government interest in this industry provides large opportunity for companies willing to build
solutions to improve the USs standing across other nations worldwide from an education
standpoint. This large industry is segmented into two major pieces; the first concerned with the
academic education of a child and the second controlling the logistics involved with students.
The latter of these segments is where our company will be entering. This segment of the industry
is primarily concerned with the safety of students as they ride school buses. This segment has a
size of $2 billion, with 13,588 public school districts. 480,000 school buses cater to 33,180,000
students across the US during the school year (Early September-late June).

Marketplace Analysis
Our initial marketplace is centered in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has 487 school
districts with a total of 980,549 students attending 1,934 public schools. Massachusetts is
concerned with the academic performance of schools within the state, as they opted to have their
scores ranked internationally on the PISA test in 2009, a void which our product can fill. Since
safety is such a concern for both parents and schools, companies currently in the industry are
making considerable progress in tracking students by collaborating with school districts to make
the journey to and from school more safe.

Marketing Plan
Marketing Strategy
Our marketing plan involves marketing our service to both end users: the parents/students
and the bus companies. We will market to parents through the schools, thus we can access a large
group of parents and students per every school. The school would reach parents through notices,
emails, and signup forms. We would market the tracking devices to the bus companies by
allowing a free trial for a few buses per company, and the company could purchase more at
selling price. Shrewsbury Public School District will be our first targeted school district. We have

selected Shrewsbury because Shrewsbury is a central and geographically accessible location in

Massachusetts. This district satisfies the criteria outlined above about what is a target school
district where installing AlertMe would generate profit. Also, we are currently in communication
with the Shrewsbury School District Superintendent, Joe Sawyer, so implementation of the
service could be done quickly.
Target Market Personas
High School Student
Take the bus

Parents

Bus Companies

Have children who Use data to optimize bus routes

(Have a smartphone) - use their take the bus

- improve efficiency

phone in the morning

Work Early (Full- Save gas

Want more time in the morning

time)

Customer

feedback

(when

Frustrated with bus timing Are concerned with buses arrive on time)
inconsistency

childs safety

Business Model
Key Partners
Our key partners are bus companies. These bus companies will provide us better access to
our customers and facilitate distribution. They will also install a tracking device on each bus. To
deliver our product we will require server managers, electrical engineers, app developers. Server
managers are necessary to maintain the servers which calculate the ETAs; electrical engineers
will build the device that receives and displays the ETAs; app developers will develop that app
that receives and displays ETAs.
Key Activities
Starting in Massachusetts local area, we will conduct an alpha test with a single bus and
spread to buses, while evolving into a beta form, and implementing a revenue stream. Post-beta,
we will spread into other districts. We will reach our target market by marketing the idea out to

school districts. This would enable us to reach students, parents and bus companies at one time.
Customer relations are maintained through a web-site, which offers tech support through an email portal.
Customer Segments
We are creating value for the parents who are concerned about their childs safety
because this service allows them to be self-assured of the route and timing of their childs bus.
We are also creating value for the bus companies because besides being a middleman for our
service they receive optimization of their own bus routes, thus improving their own routes and
increasing their riders satisfaction with the bus companies. Our most important customers are
the parents who want to be self-assured that their children are safe. Safety is our #1 priority and
we definitely want to make sure that every parent will be satisfied with their childs bus.
Key Resources
Our resources include the school(s) in a district to allow us to market to students in the
district and distribute our service directly to our subscribers. Bus companies are resources that
will help us to obtain a customer base as they will be both a marketing mechanism to directly to
students, riding in buses and allow our service to function because our subscribers cannot have a
service without a GPS tracking device on the buses themselves.
Channels
We are going to give bus companies surveys, talk with them and convince them to buy
our product for their incentives: optimization of their bus routes and better customer satisfaction.
When the bus companies agree to work with us then we can begin to distribute and sell on our
main product - the tracking device - in the market. In addition, to bring awareness for our
tracking device / app we will market towards schools and parents directly. Customers can
evaluate our organizations value proposition by giving customer feedback about any issues or
benefits that they received from using this program. Through the schools, we can sell this
product directly to parents. Before school opens, students that normally get back-to-school lists
or pre-school offers can have the option of buying our tracking service. Through the schools, the
service will be offered to parents who will want to purchase it. Once a form is signed and agreed

by the parents, the products will be shipped to the school and then sent to the parents. After the
customers have purchased the product, they can provide feedback and communicate to us
through our website. If they need another device, or their device is faulty, they can give us a call
and we will ship them another.
Cost Structure
Our business is value-driven as we want to beat our competitors by offering more value
for our customers. Using the most up-to-date weather and traffic data, our service accurately
determines exactly when ones bus will arrive at its respective stops. We prize and hope to
deliver our value proposition to our customers.
Our predominant cost is the making and maintaining of the app on app stores. The most
expensive resources would be the maintenance of our website, the purchasing stock and custom
branding of the cellular mobile devices.
Cost-Benefit Analysis

Summary Of Financial Projections

Year 2
Year 3

Year 1
Income
Statement
Revenue
Gross Profit
Operating
Expenses
EBIT
Net
Earnings
Percent of
Revenue

Year 4

Year 5

$171,243.59
$48,131.22

$223,530.22
$146,383.04

$361,452.88
$236,653.60

$498,212.12
$334,996.68

$835,438.58
$573,319.88

$123,112.37
$48,131.22

$77,147.18
$146,383.04

$124,799.28
$236,653.60

$163,215.44
$334,996.68

$262,118.70
$573,319.88

$44,280.72

$134,672.40

$217,721.31

$308,196.95

$527,454.29

25.90%

60.20%

60.24%

61.86%

63.14%

30.53%

61.70%

37.84%

45.72%

Growth
Revenue
Annual
Growth

Operations Plan
Financial Plan
Financial Summary
Financial Assumptions
The valuation of our company is 33,180,000 students who take the bus (60% of 55.3
million) X $60 yearly subscription =

2 billion dollar market opportunity

We are not going to have accounts payable or receivable as our payback will increase to 6
months if our subscribers and buyers are able to pay by credit. Based on our assumptions, our
Break-even stands at 6 months after launching the manufacturing jobs of our products. This may
extend to 7 months if we do not get our revenue immediately or if our revenue cannot be
received by cash. If our revenue cannot be received by cash, then we will have to wait upwards
of 90 days to received this revenue as our subscribers and buyers will pay by credit. Thus, in the
first 6 months, we are going to try to enforce a payment by cash, but will switch for the
convenience of the customer, to credit, once we have reached break-even.

The tax rate in Massachusetts for the Corporate Excise tax stands at 8.0%. Thus, our net
earnings are affected by this slight decrease. We expect to price our Alertme device at $19.99 and
two versions of our Alertme App: one which is free and another at $19.99. These prices may
change over time based on the net earnings, as we will be able to designate more earnings to the
product with more profit. In addition, the customer will be required to pay a $5 monthly
subscription fee, as the cost of location data will be continuous as long as this business is
running. This value approximates at $60 yearly subscription fee.
The Cost of goods sold is approximated to be $30,599.78 as we will not make any
revenue in the first month of the first year, which will only involve the finalized design and
manufacturing of our products overseas and beta testing of our app. However, this amount will
reduce to approximately $15,114.78 in the next year because we are expected to be making
profit.
As for sales and marketing costs, the first month of the first year will be purely done by
our team. This is because the first targeted cities will be local cities. However, cost for
advertisements on the internet and other media will cost us approximately $3,000 in the first
month of the first year. The succeeding months and years will require an operations managers to
oversee the day to day business of our company along with our existing team in our various
cities. In addition, our partners, bus companies such as AA bus transportation will aid in
advertising our AlertMe Product and App as we will provide them with tracking devices for
installment in their buses.
Funding Requirements
We are seeking 30,599.78 dollars for this company and the payback period (ROI) is
estimated to be 6 months for the investor. We will likely seek further funding in order to maintain
our business and eventually expand nationally and internationally with the help of investors. Our
cash safety cushion will be 25% because if there are unexpected turns in our financial plan we
will then be able to escape loss of capital. We will ask for funding every five years because
roughly every five years we will expand and scale our company to encompass a larger region.

Business Risks
We do not have technology risks as we are in the testing phase of our app and the
technology has been successfully implemented in our app. The only risk may be the number of
adopters as there may be a loss if there are not many people who initially buy our product or app.
There is a competitive risk as there are existing predominant apps that use a similar technology,
but the scale to which we interact with bus companies and track specific buses is not reached by
our competitors. In addition, the relationship we create with our bus companies is unmatched and
unforeseen by our competitors. By the time our competitors notice our product we will have the
support of our bus companies, who will continue to partner with us for economic and systemic
benefits. We plan to minimize these risks by forming a strong relationship with our trusted bus
companies and successful financial support. The worst case scenario will involve a loss of
continuous funding because we will not be able to scale this company without the right partners
and capital.