Wejo

Company Overview

• The Craft company database estimates that Wejo has 159 employees as at September 2020. This is in line with the information provided on LinkedIn and Crunchbase, where the estimates are 51-200 for LinkedIn, and 101-250 for Crunchbase.
• To date the company has its technology in 18 million active vehicles and 52.5 million accessible vehicles. There has been 4.8 trillion data points generated from 24.6 billion journeys. Wejo receives data from one in every 28 vehicles, and provides coverage of 95% of roads in the US,
• As a private company, verifiable financials for Wejo is not available. However, the Craft database estimates that for FY 2018 revenue was estimated at £2.5 million and EBIT was negative 18.5 million.
•  Investors in the company include General Motors, DIP Capital, Endeavor Ventures, Ruffena Capital and the Future Fund of the UK Government.

The Wejo Value Proposition

• Wejo provides products and services for the automotive industry, businesses, and for public sector agencies such as transport departments, other government agencies, smart cities, and universities,
• The value proposition to the automotive industry offered by Wejo from a connected car data strategy is the generation of new revenue streams, business efficiencies from optimized marketing targeting and spend, product development, and innovations in R&D.
• For business partners, the value proposition offered standardized data across multiple brands to enhance operations. Location data with an accuracy rate of 95%, verification of data quality prior to delivery that is streamed directly to the business partner cloud or API. Wejo has assisted business clients with congestion modeling, event traffic planning, improved city parking, and retail sales predictions.
• For public sector clients, Wejo offers the opportunity to garner a granular perspective of traffic in real time that can be mined for long term trend data. Public sector clients can access movement data, identify common driving events, trends, and insights. Use cases include the use of connected car data to prioritize road network improvements and investments, reducing congestion, optimizing lane usage and intersection and work zone modeling, identification of high risk areas, understanding why journeys are taken, urban planning, curbside co-ordination, and parking optimization.

Products

• Products offered by Wejo are traffic intelligence and source data on vehicle movements and driving events. The traffic intelligence product offers comprehensive US coverage of aggregated movement data that is mined for insights about traffic flows, average speeds, and congestion. Insights can be integrated into BI and GIS tools, are customizable, and is available daily, weekly, and monthly, or at a custom frequency.
• Source data on vehicle movements provide information on where cars are coming from and traveling to, addresses congestion, assist with planning for events, and identifies locations with a high footfall. Source data for driving events provides insights into how drivers behave during the journey. The data illustrates where speeding or harsh braking occurs and highlights elements that impact on the decision-making and behavior of drivers.

Services

• Wejo provides a Platform as a Service (PaaS), a data marketplace, server services, advanced BI and analytics, and a retail price index. Services provided on the platform include a data monetisation portal, insights, and a BI channel. The data marketplace is a consolidated marketplace where data from automotive manufacturers is made available for monetisation.
• Server services are offered under the Neutral Server+ brand. This is cloud-based solution that allows the business to develop a data ecosystem with other businesses and software developers, in an environment where the driver has control of what data is shared. The Wejo ADEPT platform offers BI and analytics products, integration with open source technology, and leading tool sets. Wejo's retail price index offers demand forecasting, strategic pricing behavior, inventory, and model variance.

Social Presence

• Wejo has a presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. Wejo joined Twitter in November 2014. The Wejo Twitter account has 562 followers, follows 415 accounts, and has tweeted 301 times. Recent posts were related to a free Webinar on Wejo Data Labs, the nomination of the CEO for the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and information on the recently introduced traffic intelligence product.
• The LinkedIn profile for Wejo has 4,882 followers. Recent posts on the LinkedIn profile for Wejo refer to a webinar on the Wejo Traffic Intelligence product, the webinar on Wejo Data Labs, and a link to an article where Wejo was named as a Sunday Times disruptor to watch.
• Wejo joined YouTube on 9 January 2019. To date videos on the profile has been viewed a total of 8,475 times. The most recent videos posted were related to the traffic intelligence product.

Otonomo

Overview

• Otonomo was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Herzeliya Pituach, Israel. The company is privately held, and is led by Ben Volkow, its founder and CEO.
• Otonomo is estimated by the Craft company database to have 163 employees as at December 2019. The LinkedIn profile provides a range of 51-200, while Crunchbase estimates total employees to be between 101-250.
• Company technology sources data from 20 million vehicles, that it tracks over 330 billion miles, and currently ingests over 4.1 billion data points per day.
• As a privately held company, company financial are not reported, however Otonomo is valued at $370 million. The company has raised $89 million in total funding so far, with the most recent input valued at $46 million in April 2020.
• Investors in the last round of funding included SK Holdings, Avis Budget Group, Alliance Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Previous investors include Hearst Ventures, StageOne Ventures, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Localglobe, Delphi Automotive PLC, Maniv Mobility, and Aptiv.
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Products and Services

• The Otonomo Automotive Data Services Platform applies patented technology to ingest, secure, cleanse, normalize, aggregate, and enrich car data from a variety of sources to deliver datasets that are application-ready and insights into vehicle operations. The development work usually required to launch apps and services based on datasets are significantly reduced. Features of the platform include privacy and security features with a consent management hub, a data blurring engine, consolidated OEM data, efficient data integration, and simple auditing and billing.
• Otonomo also provides a self-service platform, a data blurring service to protect user data, a neutral server service that allows third parties to access automotive data safely without requiring individual contracts, car APIs, and end to end security controls.

Target Markets

• Otonomo's target markets are individual drivers, automotive companies, fleet managers, app and service providers, and municipalities.
•  Use cases in aggregate includes smart cities, mapping and planning, location intelligence, remote diagnostics, parking solutions, construction equipment, and media measurement.
•  Personal use cases include usage-based insurance, safety and emergency services, EV services, fleet management, predictive maintenance, and concierge services.
• The company provides brochures on the website related to driver-risk profiling and intelligence, a company profile, information on the consent management hub, information on the car data services platform for telematics service providers, automotive data for the insurance industry, automatic parking payment services, remote diagnostic services, and retail offerings. Datasheets, case studies, on-demand webinars and company commissioned reports and papers are also provided.

Competitive Advantage

• Otonomo's competitive advantage resides in the multiplicity of services that are available for a variety of users on a single platform that protects the privacy of the driver, secures automotive data, is characterizes by neutrality and expertise, and which provides an ecosystem of over 100 partners.

Social Media Presence

• Otonomo has profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. On Facebook the company has 543 followers. Recent posts include an interview the CEO had with the Boston Consulting Group, a video also with the CEO speaking about the cloud agnostic system and its capabilities, and an announcement about its new Self-Service Platform, and car data API.
• On LinkedIn the company has 9,189 followers. Recent posts included a video featuring a Q&A session with the CEO, a video on the use of traffic data, and a video with the CEO speaking about the company's multi-cloud strategy.
• Otonomo has 1,430 followers on Twitter, follows 2,264 accounts and has tweeted 1,915 times. Recent tweets covered the CEO's interview with Boston Consulting Group, shared information from a recent survey conducted by the company on the willingness of European drivers to share data, and a video with the CEO on the company's cloud agnostic system and capabilities.

SMARTO (CarAlgo)

Overview

• SMARTO is in Suresnes, a suburb of Paris, France. The company was incorporated in 2014 and has approximately 10 employees. 
• SMARTO was founded by Toufik Nacer, the current CEO, with capital of €200,000. Annual revenue is estimated at $425,000 USD.
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Products and Services

• CarAlgo is a smartphone application designed to be a gateway between the vehicle and the cloud. The app monitors battery voltage, oil/water temperatures, engine load and speed, travel duration, distance traveled, fuel consumption, carbon emissions, and vehicle speed.
• The CarAlgo Device: Dongle Multiprotocol measures 6 mm and is placed in the fuse hatch, center console, or glove box. It connects to the OBD socket and vehicle data is transmitted using Bluetooth.
• Services offered with the app include engine fault diagnosis, location services,

Target Market

• The device is targeted at both individual drivers and businesses engaged in fleet management. The data generated by the device is also useful to insurers.

Competitive Advantage

• The competitive advantage of the CarAlgo app is that it helps drivers conserve fuel up to 20%, reduce carbon emissions, anticipate breakdowns, and diagnosis of vehicles, and increased mobility.

Recent Marketing

• On Twitter the last tweet the company sent was an ad introducing the CarAlgo solution.

Social Media Presence

• SMARTO has a presence on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, however the company has not been very active on its social media accounts. On Twitter, the company has 33 followers and follows 55 accounts. To date it has tweeted 18 times. On Facebook, SMARTO has 12 likes, and on LinkedIn, it has 401 connections.

Vinli

Overview

• Vinli was founded in January 2014 and is led by founder and CEP Mark Haidar. The company is privately held and is in Dallas, Texas. There are an estimated 60 employees. 
• To date Vinli has received a total of $20 million in funding, with the most amount received totaling $13.5 million. Investors include E.ON and Hersh Family Investments.
• Vinli is a privately held company and financial information is not published, however, annual revenue for Vinli is estimated at $4.3 million.  
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Products and Services

• Vinli's solutions are the Era data intelligence platform, the Tenjin, a connected car platform and custom mobility solutions to service clients on the two platforms.
• The Era data intelligence platform is proprietary to Vinli and is built on machine learning models that normalizes, analyzes, correlates and generate data to offer business solutions for clients. The platform operates in a universal data format, can be fed historical or real time data, and produces intelligence service APIs for consumption in mobility apps, services, and solutions.
•  Tenjin enables the customization of applications, provides a micro services architecture for developers to use, and possesses the largest third-party developer ecosystem for the automotive industry. Additional features include an enterprise portal with fleet management apps and customer support portals, a developer portal, white label apps, and localization.
• Custom mobility solutions are offered for research purposes (user personas, journey mapping, business analysis), strategy (gap planning, agile planning, economic model), design (clickable prototype, story boards, tend analysis) and development (machine learning, auto scaling, and micro service architecture).

Target Markets

• Vinli operates in the fleet management, automotive manufacturer, and the aftermarket for connected car services.

Competitive Advantage

• The competitive advantages are a proprietary platforms for mobility and transportation that offers customized solutions, including mobility solutions for white label offerings. Vinli has the largest mobile app ecosystem in the world.

• Because the ERA platform requires minimal inputs to operate it is a more cost effective solution than others that require data scientists to work with the data generated.

Social Media Presence

• Vinli has a social media presence on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. The LinkedIn profile has 1,359 followers, Recent posts were related to vacancies for software engineers in Europe.
• On Twitter, the company has 1,693 followers, and follows 895 accounts. To date it has tweeted 1,216 times. Recent tweets were retweets of information from ALD Automotive, an article on the company in the Dallas Morning News, and the announcement from E.ON of their investment in Vinli.
• Vinli's account on Facebook has 12,524 followers. There are no recent posts on this social media account. Recent posts advised users that telemetry data could be streamed from a Vinli connected car that has a Web Socket server,

Xevo (Journeyware)

Overview

• Xevo is a provider of connected car software via its Journeyware and Xevo Market products. The company was founded in 2000 by Satoshi Nakajima, and is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. Xevo has an estimated 300 employees.
• Prior to its purchase by the Lear Corporation for $320 million in April 2019, Xevo's estimated annual revenue was $52.8 million.
• The company also received $56.9 million in funding prior to its acquisition by Lear. Major investors were the Mirai Creation Fund and Shaw Venture Partners.
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Products and Services

• Xevo offers the Xevo Market and the Journeyware products to the market. The Xevo Market is an automotive commerce and services platform for both merchants and automakers to engage with customers using the touchscreen in vehicles, and vehicle branded smartphone apps. Consumers can order and play for services, find locations, and make reservations using the market.
• The Journeyware platform enables multi-media applications for cloud, car, and mobile devices, AI driven recommendations, and monetization opportunities for automakers from content delivery that enhances the in-vehicle experience.
•  Journeyware features Xevo Context, a tool using AI technology to provide a contextual user experience. Preferences, past behavior, current route, time of day, and other factors are used as a baseline to develop content for drivers. Xevo ID allows drivers to link merchant accounts to the vehicle for use on the Xevo Market. The feature links with existing identity services or can be linked as a white label service to merchants and OEMS, and driver profiles transition seamlessly from vehicle to vehicle from the same manufacturer.
• The target market for Journeyware is customers of vehicles, and automakers, merchant partners, and service partners seeking monetization opportunities.

Competitive Advantage

• Xevo's competitive advantage is its user-friendly interface and cloud based framework allowing for easy interactions between mobile apps and in car content. This makes for a customizable driver experience engendered by proprietary AI technology.

Recent Marketing

• Xevo has advertised on its social media accounts for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The ads related to over-the-air updates for OEM solutions and services, use cases for restaurants and curb side pickup on Xevo Market, vacancies, and for its in-vehicle technology.

Social Media Presence

• Xevo has a presence on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The LinkedIn profile has 5,778 followers. On Instagram Xevo has 188 followers, follows 168 accounts, and has posted on 218 occasions.
• Xevo has 745 followers on Facebook. On Twitter, Xevo has 4,370 followers, follows 2,500 accounts, and has tweeted 6,594 times.

Smartcar

Overview

• Smartcar is a car API for mobility applications founded in 2015. The company is located in Mountain View, California. The company has an estimated 11-50 employees.
• To date the company has raised $12 million in seed and Series A funding from NEA and Andreessen Horowitz. Annual revenue is estimated to be less than one million.
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Products and Services

• The Smartcar API provides endpoints that allow for the retrieval of live information and the performance of actions on vehicles from many brands without the need for hardware.
•  Smartcar Connect is the authorization process used when customers are connecting their vehicles. The platform also provides SDKs and documentation in eight languages.
• The target market is developers working in the auto insurance, car sharing, energy and utilities, EV charging networks, fleet management, and on-demand car washes industries.

Competitive Advantage

• Smartcar's competitive advantage resides in its developer friendly toolkit for the creation of connected car applications.

Recent Marketing

•  Recent ads addressed policyholder retention and the usefulness of Smartcar for the auto insurance industry.

Social Media Presence

• Smartcar has a presence on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. On Instagram the company has 196 followers, follows 83 accounts and has posted 145 times.
• On Twitter Smartcar has 833 followers, follows 540 accounts, and has sent 1,449 tweets since it joined the platform in January 2014. Smartcar's LinkedIn profile has 1,687 followers, while the Facebook account has 608 followers.

Media Scan

EY Entrepreneur of the Year

• The Business Manchester website reported on the EY Entrepreneur of the Year North West Awards on 18 September 2020.
• Wejo's mention in the article related to its CEO Richard Barlow, a finalist for the award.

Funding

• There were articles from the Tech.eu, UKTN, Automotive World, and This is Money websites, among others, as well as the announcement on PRNewswire regarding a $12 million fundraising effort from Wejo.

Data Visualization Partnership

• On 12 June 2020, Traffic Technology International reported on a partnership between Wejo and Moonshadow Mobile to enable DOT and transportation engineers to interact and visualize with big data easily. The need for storage and manual queries is eliminated.

Neutral Server+ and Daimler Partnership

• Just Auto reported on 20 December 2019 that Wejo was launching a Neutral Server Plus product, as well as a partnership with Daimler for the use of the service. Pay-as-you-drive insurance, fuel status, vehicle status, vehicle lock status, and electric vehicles' data from Daimler will be accessed using the Neutral Server Plus product.
• This was also reported in Traffic Technology International on 19 December 2019.

IPO and Unicorn Status

•  BusinessCloud reported on 25 November 2019 that Wejo CFO Barry Nightingale expects the firm to announce an IPO and achieve unicorn status within two years.
• Mr. Nightingale cited a data sales rate of 600% per month and projected turnover of $60 million for 2020.

New Manchester Office

• BusinessCloud reported on 31 October 2020 on the opening of Wejo's fourth global office in Manchester, United Kingdom. The new office is expected to create 100 jobs within 12 months.

Tracking COVID-19

• Telecompaper reported on 18 May 2020 that Wejo was assisting US states to track the movements of citizens during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Nevada Data Partnership

• Automotive World reported on 16 September 2019 that Waycare will be leveraging Wejo's connected car data for more accurate traffic management solutions in Nevada.

Databricks Partnership

• BusinessCloud reported on 27 November 2019 that Wejo had entered into a partnership with Databricks for help in processing over 15 billion data points daily.

Expansion Plans

• BusinessCloud reported on 15 March 2020 on the plans of the CEO, Richard Barlow, to expand the company globally after a cash injection of $25 million from General Motors in 2019.