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Octoco Group, a South African technology investment and product development firm, has acquired a strategic equity stake in HisWay Labs, the Cape Town-based company behind the TrackView rail monitoring system.
TrackView is a solar-powered sensor that monitors rail integrity and train positions. It has no copper cabling or batteries, two parts that make trackside equipment a common target for theft.
HisWay Labs says it is built to handle extreme heat, dust, flooding and deliberate tampering, and to run around the clock with little maintenance.
“South Africa has a long tradition of solving hard engineering problems out of necessity. HisWay Labs has turned one of our most damaging infrastructure challenges into a globally competitive product. Backing them is a chance to help restore confidence in our own rail network while proving that world-class industrial hardware can come from here,” said Heinrich de Lange, Managing Director, Octoco Group.
Led by CEO and co-founder Franz Struwig, HisWay Labs is a Cape Town-based company that develops TrackView, a rail-integrity monitoring system designed for South Africa’s rail conditions.
The investment comes as South Africa’s rail network struggles with cable theft, vandalism and track failures that go undetected.
These problems have pushed freight onto roads and raised costs for the mining, agriculture and manufacturing sectors that rely on rail. HisWay Labs says TrackView can give operators earlier warning of broken rails, before they cause derailments.
TrackView has been certified and given product type approval by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). It has been deployed commercially in partnership with Siemens Mobility and is now in field trials in the United States.
HisWay Labs is also exhibiting at InnoTrans in Germany this month, where it hopes to find distribution and operator partners in Europe.
The company sees demand outside South Africa. Rail operators worldwide are replacing track circuits with axle counters, which improve train detection but remove the traditional way of spotting broken rails. Infrastructure theft is also a growing problem in other countries.
Octoco Group is a private equity firm that works with tech companies to create and grow hardware and software products.
It owns Octoco Consulting, Octoco AI, and Polymorph, focusing on software and hardware development, AI, and technology consulting. Its portfolio includes companies like TaxTim, LeaseSurance, and SquirrelAway.
