Big Data and Data Analytics are Extending Arm of OEMs

Terms like Big Data and Data Analytics are commonplace in the automotive industry. Now it is getting applied in every stage of automotive conceptualization, designing, and production.  According to the McKinsey & Company report, by 2030, global revenues from automotive data-related services will grow to around $750B. Automotive giants like Tesla, BMW, Ford, Toyota are built on data.

Nowadays the automotive companies find difficulties with integrating a large amount of data and analyzing it within a tight time frame. That’s why they decide to outsource the whole part of their data analysis, to be able to control a large volume of data. Data analytics companies across the world are racing to develop innovative business solutions and widen the scope of usage of data analytics in areas as diverse as payment transactions to operational efficacy by offering expanded services to their customers. At the core of these developments are the insights gained through the analysis of the data being generated in the business operations.

We’ve looked into some big data and data analytics companies in the automotive industry across Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia. These are the companies that focus primarily on big data and/or data analytics in the automotive industry and large IT outsourcing companies that can support your project with versatile expertise:

Zene

An Indian company Zene, headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, founded in 2014, is a plug-and-play device that connects the car to the cloud and enables it to capture great insights from the car’s data. This device not only can manage the car remotely but also know whether it is performing at its optimal level.

Hansa Cequity

Hansa Cequity is an Indian company, situated in Bengaluru. It is a marketing company that provides customer strategy, data services, analytics, campaign management, digital and Customer relationship Centre services for key clients across different verticals. Hansa Cequity was established by R K SWAMY HANSA Group along with S. Swaminathan and Ajay Kelkar.

V2X Network

Headquartered in London, V2X Network seems to be a rather nascent player in handling payment transactions. Their platform V2X Network is an autonomous transaction platform for the mobility ecosystem. V2X uses distributed ledger technologies, to enable peer-2-peer data and payment transactions between vehicles and connected service providers. Founded in 2018, V2X Network enables the vehicles to transact on their own by using digital vehicle identity.

Motorq

Motorq, US-based a connected car data ecosystem, with office in Chennai (India) was founded in 2016 that enables enterprises such as fleets, insurance companies, and governments access to connected vehicle data and analytics at scale so that enterprises can rapidly improve operations and expand services.

In November 2020, Motorq and General Motors have announced that they have integrated GM’s OnStar Pre-Delivery data service with Motorq’s cloud-based platform to allow fleet operators to identify and track the location of Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac vehicles throughout their logistics lifecycles.

Motorq has closed a $7 million Series A round of funding in December 2020. The round was led by Story Ventures with participation from existing investors FM Capital, Monta Vista Capital, and Avanta Ventures, the investment arm of CSAA, a AAA Insurer.

AlgoDriven

The UAE-based startup, AlgoDriven founded in 2017, is an automotive data platform. EvalExpert mobile app, a vehicle appraisal solution developed by AlgoDriven that uses proprietary algorithms for vehicle appraisal, price guidance, and wholesale management. EvalExpert features a web dashboard and integrates with the existing business solutions for easy usability. Car dealers use EvalExpert to appraise their cars.

Acerta

Acerta, a startup in Canada, delivers machine learning technology to the manufacturing and automotive industries.

Acerta Analytics and GAA extended their partnership in January 2021, providing in-country resources to support and deploy Acerta’s advanced AI and machine learning solutions to automotive customers across Europe, North America, and Asia.

In February 2021, Acerta Analytics announced the release of its industrial machine learning platform, LinePulse 2.0. With the help of this platform, users can benefit from an expanded range of data analysis and visualization options, including Intelligent Component Selection for AI-driven recommendations during assembly, Smart Line Analytics for enhanced data visibility, and Automatic Retraining for continuous model improvement.

DRVR

By using connected car data and data analytics companies are enabled to take better control of their fleets. DRVR from Bangkok, founded in 2014, is focused on Data analytics centered on vehicles. DRVR has developed dashboards for Data Analytics that are compatible with many different off-the-shelf Telematics solutions. The main focus of the company in 2020 has been on its new suite of driving behavior services.

In 2017, DRVR partnered with Tata Communications as a global IoT connectivity partner. DRVR claims they will be making Asia’s vehicle fleets the smartest and most cost-efficient in the world.

In 2020, DRVR announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Smart Axiata’s Digital Innovation Fund. With the funding, the company wants to expand its services into Cambodia and hire across the board.

N-IX

Headquartered in Lviv, L’vivs’ka Oblast’, Ukraine, N-IX helps businesses ensure predictive vehicle maintenance and make data-driven decisions on the road. The company was founded in 2002 and has got a broad range of expertise in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and big data analytics in the automotive sector.

In 2020, N-iX has reached a Partner Level status in the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program. With the partnership, N-IX will leverage Google Cloud and its advanced capabilities to help its clients drive maximum value from their cloud investment by expanding their market reach, improving the performance of their products, increasing time to market, and more. N-IX has achieved Amazon Web Services Advanced Consulting Partner status in the AWS Partner Network (APN) in February 2021.

Future Processing

Future Processing was founded in 2000. Its headquarters is situated in Poland. Future Processing is a software development company that provides data analytics services to many companies in the automotive industry and helps them augment their teams with automotive software developers to meet their business goals. The key clients of the companies are Valeo, Volkswagen Group Polska, and Tanneco.

Data Reply

Data Reply, London based company, founded in 2015, offers a wide range of data processing and analytics services. They specialize in big data, data science, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, digital communication, IoT, mobile and social networking. It provides its services to many automotive companies such as Audi, Fiat, and CNH Industrial.

Phocas

The automotive data analytics company Phocas, headquartered in the UK, delivers data analytics solutions to manufacturers, distributors, and retailers around the world. Phocas provides powerful data tools and dashboards that will enable automotive businesses to quickly determine sales and inventory priorities. In January 2021, Phocas Software announced a US$34 million capital raise to accelerate its growth in America and the United Kingdom, expand into new industries and develop its core products.

Softweb Solutions

The US-based Softweb Solutions, with office in Ahmedabad (India), has experience in data analytics in the automotive industry from 2000, as well as helps businesses gain valuable insights from data in retail, oil & gas, telecom, and healthcare industries.

In 2018, the company was acquired by Avnet, a global technology solutions provider. Softweb Solutions accelerates Avnet’s IoT efforts as well as its data services and AI capabilities.

ISoftStone

The Chinese company iSoftStone started in 2001, provides technology services in Data Analytics, Mobility, Enterprise Application Integration, Cloud, and Quality Assurance. Additionally, the company offers iSoftStone RapidStart solution accelerators: RapidStart Data Analytics, a reporting, and analytics solution, and RapidStart SharePoint Migration that supports small to large scale SharePoint content migration.

Xomnia

Xomnia from the Netherlands started in 2013, helps organizations generate value from data by developing, integrating, and maintaining their big data platforms and predictive solutions. The company also assists businesses to gain insights with the help of data analytics in the automotive industry. The key clients of Xomnia are ProRail, Geelen Projects, Schadegarant etc.

Pythian

Pythian Services Inc., known as Pythian is a Canadian multinational corporation. It has its office in Telangana, India. Founded in 1997, the company provides cloud and data analytics services to companies in the automotive industry. It helps businesses by technologies such as advanced analytics, big data, cloud, databases, and infrastructure management. In November 2020, Pythian has earned the Data Management Partner Specialization in the Google Cloud Partner Advantage Program.

Drust

Established in 2014, DRUST is a French company. It is a car data analytics cloud-based platform. DRUST powers driver-oriented services alongside car service brands, to provide the drivers with insights about their car and their driving. DRUST was acquired by Continental in 2019.

Sight Machine

Sight Machine is a California-based company, set up in 2012. It provides an analytics platform that addresses critical challenges in quality and productivity throughout the businesses.

In February 2021, Essex Furukawa partnered with Sight Machine Inc. as the manufacturing productivity platform for its plants in China, the US, and Germany. The agreement extends the digital transformation initiative begun at Essex Furukawa’s magnet wire plant in Torreón, Mexico, where Sight Machine has helped Essex Furukawa increase EV production. Essex Furukawa will use Sight Machine to improve manufacturing quality, speed, and uptime in its plants supplying automakers in four of the world’s six largest auto-making countries.

Zendrive

The US venture Zendrive, founded in 2013, powers mobile sensor data to provide actionable insights that improve safety for passengers and drivers globally. It has one of its office in Bengaluru. In December 2020, Zendrive released a visual data report that analyzes driving behavior in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, with a sample dataset of verified collision incidents from 2018 through 2020, the report reveals that distracted driving now contributes to more than 57% of all collisions on the road.

PitStop

A Canadian platform, PitStop, founded in 2015, aggregates data and uses machine learning to perform predictive maintenance for vehicles. In October 2020, Pitstop announced a Series A round of funding led by Sensata Technologies with participation from existing investors Ripple Ventures and Hike Ventures. With the funds, Pitstop will expand market reach, enhance product features and build additional prediction algorithms for the automotive industry. The amount of funding was not disclosed.

CARFIT

CARFIT, headquartered in California, was established in 2016. It is a self-diagnostic & predictive maintenance platform in the connected car space that provides the dealers/service companies with customized lead generation and car-owners with individualized predictive maintenance info on their car.

wejo ADEPT

Started in 2013, the UK-based Wejo gathers & analyzes car data from connected cars to help car manufacturers improve their products through data-driven decisions. In March 2021, Wejo collaborated with HELLA, an automotive part supplier. The collaboration aims to develop new data-based business models and further enhance the performance of HELLA’s sensor portfolio. HELLA also acquired a minority stake in Wejo. Wejo organizes data from about 15 million connected vehicles for its clients such as General Motors Co, Hyundai Motor Co, and Daimler.

Otonomo

The Otonomo Automotive Data Services Platform is an Israeli company that was started in 2015. It helps to fuel an ecosystem of OEMs, fleets, and more than 100 service providers. Otonomo’s neutral platform securely ingests more than 2.6 billion data points per day from over 20 million global connected vehicles, then reshapes and enriches it, to accelerate time to market for new services that delight drivers. Use cases include emergency services, mapping, EV management, subscription-based fueling, parking, predictive maintenance, usage-based insurance, media measurement, in-vehicle services, and dozens of smart city services.

In November 2020, Otonomo had partnered with xyzt.ai. Otonomo provides xyzt.ai and its diverse collection of over 100 commercial partners with access to multi-layered connected vehicle data from 12 OEMs, including traffic, hazard, ultrasonic sensor, weather, parking, and other vehicle-based data.

Vinli

Vinli is an automotive technology company, established in Texas, the US in 2014. Vinli builds data intelligence solutions and services for the connected world. It offers its own connected car platform called Tenjin, which businesses can use to quickly create their own connected car services and applications. In 2018, ALD Automotive signed a strategic partnership with Vinli. Through the partnership, Vinli provides services to enrich ALD’s service offering and develop new value-added solutions to improve both TCO and driver experience.

Xevo

Xevo, a part of Lear Corporation, is a Seattle-based company, started in 2000. It provides connected-car software. It is a development partner to some of the world’s largest automakers such as Chevrolet, GMC, Buick, Hyundai, etc.

In 2017, Xevo launched Journeyware, a suite of products that includes a data management software designed to personalize the consumer driving experience. Journeyware’s components are already deployed in more than 25 million vehicles worldwide.

Smartcar

Smartcar is a US-based company that was established in 2015. It develops car API for mobility applications. The company is collecting data from connected cars and making that data available to developers who want to enable their apps to locate, unlock, and read the odometers from cars across more than a dozen car brands.

Smartcar has formed a partnership with True Mileage in January 2021. Under the partnership, both companies will launch usage-based insurance (UBI) solution for auto insurers. The solution combines Smartcar’s API with True Mileage’s UBI analytics. In August 2020, Smartcar and Pitstop have announced a partnership to offer the hardware-free prescriptive fleet maintenance solution to enterprises in the United States and Canada.

Oxylabs

Lithuania-based Oxylabs, established in 2008, is a technology company that provides tools and resources for web data collection. In 2020, the company partnered with undergraduate students from Stanford University, the University of Virginia, and Virginia Tech to support TrackCorona, a COVID-19 tracking website that went from a blip on the radar screen to a prominent global resource with 1.4 million visits from 193 countries, averaging 40,000 users per day.

Bright Data (Formerly Luminati Networks)

Bright Data is an Israeli startup that was founded in 2014. It is a data collection enablement platform. In March 2021, Luminati Networks announced that it is to become Bright Data as it takes the next step in its journey to deliver valuable online data to organizations and further support the data collection industry.

Teradata

US company Teradata, founded in 1979, offers analytic data platforms, applications, and services for data warehousing and analytic technologies. In India it has its office in Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Gurugram and Navi Mumbai. In February 2021, Teradata joined the Open Manufacturing Platform, a global alliance initiated by the BMW Group and Microsoft to drive industrial IoT developments and build future Industry 4.0 solutions in the manufacturing and automotive sector. As a member of the OMP, Teradata will help manufacturers accelerate innovation and achieve production efficiencies across the entire value chain by unlocking the potential of their data.

Conclusion:

Nowadays vehicles are more complex and sophisticated, they generate a huge amount of data. Automotive players must invest in data management to protect and improve their relationship with customers. Managing data is a three steps process: real-time data acquisition, data unification, and data insights. These three steps are the keep to responding to the challenges and promise of new technologies.

The companies working in the automotive data sector are growing around the world. Choosing the right vendor that suits business needs can become a real challenge. In order to make an informed decision, it is always better to choose the company with proven experience, some automotive data analytics companies to a variety of automotive companies are compiled here.

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Published in Telematics Wire