Tata Motors Limited has launched Tata SKOOLMAN, a telematics based tracking solution, for addressing pressing concerns over student safety during school bus travel. Tata SKOOLMAN will be a standard fitment on the Tata Ultra range of school buses and will also be available for fitment on other models of school buses in the after-market. Taking the initiative of school bus safety forward, Tata Motors also launched the all new 'Ultra BS3 - Safe School Bus', equipped with Tata SKOOLMAN at the SIAM Bus & Special Vehicle Show 2015 (BSVS) hosted at India Expo Mart in Greater Noida.

Besides providing a host of safety features, Tata SKOOLMAN also makes it convenient for parents to track the arrival and departure of their children in real time (through SMS alerts), live tracking on a map or via a mobile phone application. Tata SKOOLMAN also provides an effective fleet management tool for schools/bus fleet operators to plan bus routes better and manage their school bus fleet more effectively. Tata SKOOLMAN features include: it triggers an automatic SMS alert to parents/guardians, on arrival of the bus, for just in time pick-up and drop; it empowers parents with a mobile application to track the school bus carrying their children, through a map on a real time basis; notifies the parent on the location of the bus, through a SMS based query system; tracks school buses on real time basis to ensure safety of the children onboard - an update is generated every 10 seconds; schools receive a notifications on instances of unsafe driving through a SMS or e-mail alert; schools can stay assured of data security against any unauthorized access through 256 bit AES data encryption technique for data communication and dedicated server space for school data; and prevents entry of buses in zones that schools perceive unsafe for children by geo-fencing the restricted regions.

Bus Fleet admins/owners can plan and deploy the fleet in the best possible way through route management facility - define bus stops, create and manage routes; analyze and optimize the performance of every bus in the fleet, based on an extensive set of fleet usage reports and thereby increase the productivity of the entire fleet; ensures optimum availability of the fleet by using fleet related reminders to avoid missing any of the bus related renewals; and minimizes fuel consumption and reduces the carbon footprint by tracking the duration for which the bus was idling through 'engine-Idling monitoring'.