How do companies that function fleets of business automobiles work in the direction of improved highway security, higher effectivity and lowered insurance coverage premiums? LightMetrics, a Californian start-up that’s right this moment saying an $8.5 million funding spherical, thinks video telematics may play a vital function.

It has been potential for a while to equip automobiles with GPS-enabled black containers, which monitor the best way the car is being pushed. Is the driving force susceptible to dashing, for instance, or to sudden braking or acceleration? The place and when do they drive?

Such expertise offers a stream of information that may assist drivers perceive the best way to change their behaviours for the higher – to drive extra safely, for instance, or to make use of gas extra effectively. The info can be helpful to 3rd events comparable to insurers, which might use it to evaluate danger extra precisely – and to business fleet managers, who can use it to make sure their drivers are protected and environment friendly.

Nevertheless, Soumik Ukil, co-founder and CEO of LightMetrics, believes these typical telematics merchandise present an incomplete image. “They’re helpful, however they received’t essentially decide up each problematic behaviour, and so they don’t supply context,” he says.

Telematics expertise received’t inform you, for instance, whether or not a driver is just too near the car in entrance, or whether or not they’re distracted – maybe by a cell phone. Nor will it present a proof for a doubtlessly dangerous behaviour: a driver might have braked sharply as a result of they had been heading in the direction of a junction too shortly, say, or just because a automobile has instantly pulled out in entrance of them.

LightMetrics subsequently believes video would be the subsequent frontier for the $76 billion telematics business. Its RideView expertise provides a dashcam to the telematics package deal, with a digital camera that displays each the driving force and the highway forward. The video feed could be matched to the telematics information, offering a far richer understanding of the driving force’s behaviour. The answer can even difficulty alerts when it detects a dangerous behaviour – dashing, say, or a driver not being attentive to the highway.

“We’re scanning the highway and the driving force in actual time,” explains Ukil. “It’s like having a digital assistant who’s sitting subsequent to the driving force.” The info generated by the system can also be obtainable to the fleet supervisor, who can draw drivers’ consideration to problematic points at value determinations and efficiency critiques – or extra instantly if there’s a severe fear.

LightMetrics companions with established telematics suppliers, an strategy that has seen it develop shortly. Its expertise has now been deployed into greater than 2,000 business car fleets worldwide, with the corporate’s revenues rising threefold over the course of 2022. It’s additionally specializing in partnerships with insurers, which may use the expertise to evaluate danger extra precisely – but additionally to extend claims effectivity, since video offers an instantaneous account of what has occurred in an accident the place fault may in any other case be disputed.

The early outcomes from deployments are encouraging. Information from in-vehicle techniques counsel they’ll scale back dangerous behaviours comparable to dashing and distracted driving b as much as 80% and 70% respectively. That ought to imply far fewer accidents – and, in time, lowered insurance coverage premiums for fleet operators.

Nonetheless, Ukil believes LightMetrics – and video-enabled telematics – is just simply getting going. “That is going to be a expertise that’s all over the place,” he says. “For now, we’re solely scratching the floor.” Hundreds of thousands of organisations function business car fleets, he factors out, from very massive companies to small and medium-sized enterprises. There may be even the potential to develop into the private car market.

LightMetrics’ fundraising will probably be necessary on this regard. The $8.5 million is coming from the enterprise capital supplier Sequoia Capital India, which has taken encouragement from market projections suggesting gross sales of video telematics options may develop at a price of 16.5% over the subsequent three years. “Video telematics is the quickest rising phase of the telematics business,” says Ashish Agrawal, Managing Director of Sequoia India. “Lightmetrics’ potential to deploy superior laptop imaginative and prescient fashions on the sting, throughout a spread of sprint cameras, permits it to serve all car sorts on this massive market.”

The money will probably be used for additional funding in product innovation, as LightMetrics continues to make use of synthetic intelligence instruments to extend the sophistication of its RideView resolution. The corporate can even put money into its go-to-market assets, specializing in additional partnerships with telematics suppliers, insurers and automotive producers.

“Video goes to be the brand new GPS,” says Ukil, who expects this expertise to develop into ubiquitous for fleet operators. “We want to ensure it spreads far and extensive.”