The deal, finalised on Monday after three months of due diligence and negotiations, is a further milestone for Motion-S, the University of Luxembourg’s first ever spinoff launched in 2014 focused on data-driven products and services in smart mobility, automotive and insurance.
The partners initially met during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. “It was just before covid, and from there we started to work in relation, pure project-based... analysing truck data and maintenance data to infer models for predictive maintenance,” Motion-S CEO German Castignani told Delano.
“Now we are in the phase where we’re working together with them on the front end of the platform. They saw that as an opportunity to acquire some activity from Motion-S.”
Opportunities in Latin America
Group <a>, founded nearly 90 years ago, is an award-winning company serving the aftermarket and OEMs in North and South America from its main hub in Bogota, Colombia. It boasts 5,000 collaborators across four business units mainly focused in automotive, real estate, mining operations and construction. Castignani notes their strength particularly in logistic fleets and trucks, and in 2020 Motion-S worked on a project with the industry player on predictive maintenance and breakdown detection.
Motion-S sees benefits of the partnership not just in terms of the company’s automotive value chain, with Group <a> supporting the revolutionising of automotive-related services based on analytics, but also for opportunities in new markets. As Castignani explained, current competition on the Latin American market is not as stiff as in Europe.
“We have two business verticals: the fleets telematics vertical, where we deliver premium analytics to companies doing tracking and fleet management, but also our historical vertical, which is insurance analytics, risk assessment, [etc.],” Castignani explains. And it’s in this latter area he sees a lot of potential. “There’s a big possibility to run telematics campaigns there, and to start digitalising the product via smartphone.”
Opportunties to refine, expand
While this round involves an automotive industrial partner, it’s similar to its 2018 partnering with institutional association Febiac (representing car manufacturers and other stakeholders in Belgium and Luxembourg), which invested €1m in the Luxembourg spinoff, acquiring participation in Motion-S capital.
Hares Neme, the newly appointed Motion-S board member who also serves as Group <a> head of innovation, called the partnership one which “will further consolidate our path to service the future of mobility by bringing forth connected products and services that are better aligned to the specific needs of our users and their surroundings.”
With the investment, Castignani wants to focus on the two main verticals, possibly refining insurance analytics, but also expanding analytics for fleet. He has also been involved in research on risk assessment for connected vehicles and is exploring opportunities to capitalise on that platform.
Castignani adds, “This investment lets us continue on our mission to build smart solutions with further integration of data providers and platforms, as well as to develop new mobility profiling algorithms to better explain mobility costs.”