Field service engineers may not be the first group of customers who come to mind when you think about profitable opportunities in B2B technology. But that blind spot itself talks about the opportunity in space for those who ascend and target the “work site”.
One of the players in this space, pamper – who builds programs for maintenance personnel to take pictures and quickly access information about the machines they repair – announced on Tuesday that it had raised a new round of 230 million dollars from KKR to expand its business.
XOI will immediately use a set of this funding for immediate growth: it buys another company in space, specified, to increase its data groups with more information about about 85,000 additional model families and relevant data. XOI plans to integrate this data into the current statute to provide more instructions for the device and other data for its users, in addition to creating other data collections to predict maintenance, promotions and other works.
XOI does not reveal the price you pay for its determination, nor what will be its own evaluation after the new financing. From what we understand, the deal makes KKR the owner of the majority of XOI, which raised less than $ 20 million before now. We also understand that the price of Specifix is less than $ 230 million in KKR. This is the first acquisition of XOI.
The deal is the latest turn and development of a company that has been present since 2010 and life began in a somewhat different field than it is today.
Its headquarters is located in Nashville, and it was originally called Pairasight and then Xoeye (both of which were displayed by Techcrunch over the years). In this incarnation, the company was building devices – specifically, 3D glasses are initially connected to DIY lovers, then the field service technicians to communicate with the engineers from remote and customer service assistants to get more information from a distance, in the actual time, where the technicians were working Electricity equipment, plumbing, air conditioners, stoves or other machines.
But the devices are already difficult, and this work failed in prosperity. Unit prices were very high for customers who were aware of the budget, and the factors of the model were very penetrator at rugged to the level they needed to stay in one piece on the site.
“If they seemed cold like his glasses,” said CEO and co -founder Aaron Salo, referring to his investor, Jake Heil, his partner in KKR, “Maybe he would have been working.”
Meanwhile, startup witnessed an opportunity to create applications that acquired all the same data, such as glasses, but can be used on phones and tablets that their target users have started.
This led to the drop of Xoeye “Al Ain” to “I”, which is said by CEO and co -founder Aaron Salo now about “intelligence”, and the work was launched.
Companies like XOI and Specifix are part of an increasing number of companies that build solutions to what is generally referred to as “field service” or “front lines”, and people who do not sit on offices, and faces the customer or outside the field to work in physical environments. What distinguishes them from others in the same area, however, a large number of applications focus on certain areas and not other regions.
“Many of them have been built to operate commercial operations, scabing and sending,” Salo said, but move to the site and ignore you. It is a deprived space. “
No one denies that it can be a challenge to sell data, business intelligence and other tangible assets to a market that is entrenched in very physical work. But with the continued development in the industry, the same machines become more advanced, they attracted more potential customers towards companies like XOI to help engineers accomplish their jobs.
“This company has a real debt, takes its” laboratory “and put it in this field, put it at work and at work, which, in this case, is really uncomfortable, it is difficult to reach places.” “Magic in this program is that it provides uncomfortable people throughout the day to make the rest of our lives comfortable.”
