Asset Tracking

Asset tracking needs two components: a moving one and an anchor. Either the reader or the tag can be the anchor, and choosing correctly is most of the design. QR, RFID, BLE, NFC, UWB and GPS all sit on the same platform, so the choice follows the asset in front of you.

What are you tracking?

We start by naming the unit of traceability. A single high-value item, a low-value carrier and a moving vehicle each call for a different technology, and picking one leaves the others open for the next asset.

Pick the technology

No technology wins on every axis. Read distance, the environment and the tag economics decide it.

Feature	QR	RFID	BLE	GPS
Range	~1 m	~10 m	~100 m	Effectively unlimited
Simultaneous scanning	Limited by operator speed	Up to 50 crates/second	Continuous, per zone	Continuous
Dusty or metal-heavy environments	Weak	Strong (may need special tags)	Strong (may need special tags)	Strong
Tag cost	Low	Medium	High	High
Tag battery life	None needed	None needed	~3 years	~1 week
Built-in sensors (temperature, etc.)	No	Sometimes, with special tags	Yes	No
Anti-theft	No	No, without a workflow around it	Yes, in real time	Yes

Match the technology to the asset

Crates and pallets - low value, high volume: QR if manual scanning is acceptable; RFID once bulk scanning matters, up to 50 crates a second.

Trolleys and scales - higher value, fewer units: RFID where check-in and check-out is enough; BLE once real-time indoor position earns the extra cost.

Forklifts and AGVs: BLE for 3-5 m indoor location, with an option for built-in sensors to monitor utilisation alongside position.

Distributed IT assets - fewer than 50 units per site: QR if a manual audit is acceptable; BLE once continuous monitoring justifies the gateway.

Concentrated high-value inventory - jewellery, electronics, over 50-100 units per site: RFID tags across form factors that do not interfere with the customer experience, or BLE where real-time theft detection is essential.

The platform does not force a single answer across a site. A warehouse commonly runs QR on cartons, RFID on pallets and BLE on the forklifts moving them, and all three write to one record.

In production

Razorpay runs point-of-sale device warehouse management on the platform: live stock across the warehouse, factory, hubs, field service executives and end customers, automated goods receipts and stock transfers with e-way bills in SAP, quick physical inventory and verification for frequent audits, and asset depreciation and maintenance schedules built in.

BigBasket tracks five lakh crates a day across eighteen activities, validated in under 300 ms, over a fleet of twenty lakh crates and pallets in more than seven hundred warehouses and dark stores. That covers the whole crate life cycle, procurement to write-off, with alerts when crate levels at a site fall below threshold.