For realizing a world without car accidents
CarVi Inc Interview
Every month at Plug and Play, we interview one of our selected startups to introduce their activities. This month we interviewed CarVi Inc. from the Batch 1 Mobility program which provides video recognition devices and data software for automobiles.
CarVi Inc. is a startup headquartered in San Francisco, USA. They have offices in Silicon Valley, Chicago, and South Korea, and they started to fully deploy into the Japanese market about a year ago.
To promote safe driving, they provide a device called ‘Advanced Driver Assistance Systems’ (ADAS) that is installed in the windshield of cars to recognize surrounding images with AI to generate alerts in case of dangers. In addition, they provide software that stores the data collected by ADAS to drivers, automobile insurance companies, fleet management or car companies for them to be able to check driving habits, vehicle, and accidents.
Although various technologies such as autonomous driving have been developed, hundreds of thousands of car accidents are still occurring all over the world. CarVi’s slogan is “The open road is in safe hands,” and they are concentrating on creating systems that promote safety to that end car accidents.
Take for example SKOR, a system that shows how good drivers are driving with a safety score. In the future, by linking SKOR to automobile insurance, they are trying to develop a system where drivers are more conscious of safe driving by giving them incentives like the higher one’s SKOR is, the lower the insurance fees will be.
In this interview, Mr. Yuki Kasatani, who is their BD Manager in Japan, talked about the challenges in the Japanese market and the successes they’ve had in collaboration with partners.
Saori: Your headquarters is in Silicon Valley, but how many members do you have in Japan?
Yuki: Now, just me, actually. I communicate with customers and partners on a daily basis, but if important discussions related to contracts are to be done, members of the head office come to Japan to attend the meetings. Although we are communicating every day remotely, some members come to Japan on a monthly basis to strengthen local networks. I, myself, was originally working for in Mitsui & Co, and after experiencing IT startups and professional athletes, I got acquainted with CarVi’s Chief Creative Officer Dinesh through a common acquaintance and became involved in CarVi.
Saori: That sounds unique! How do you see the Japanese market compared with the one of United States?
Yuki: Language localization is still necessary. Compared to the markets of other countries, it is difficult to introduce software interfaces and manuals as they are in English and CarVi is working on it. Also, Japanese roads are more complicated than the ones of the United States. When going to rural areas, lanes are often not well maintained. I would like as many vehicles as possible to adopt ADAS and collect data to learn about Japanese roads and congestion. The more data we collect, the more valuable our software becomes and the roads safer!
Saori: Have you had any difficulties cooperating with large corporations?
Yuki: We usually do meetings in English, but we sometimes cannot understand the details that our Japanese partners want to when the discussion has to be all in English. In that case, I follow up with the partners after the discussion to ask if they have any concerns. However, I felt it was very easy to discuss with large corporate partners participating in Plug and Play Japan’s program as they are already used to discussions with overseas startups.
One other challenge when collaboration with large companies is the fact that there are many preparations and/or conditions proposed by partners that we have to meet before we introduce our service. Although many automobile companies are currently looking at us as a candidate for a PoC, they often present us with detailed formulated conditions. In order to build trust with Japanese companies and have them understand our product and services, it is necessary to satisfy each condition proposed by both parties.
Saori: How did you know about Plug and Play Japan?
Yuki: The head office was already in contact with Phillip, a representative of Plug and Play Japan. Our head office had not participated in the program before, but Phillip had close communication with our team and they were sharing information with Plug and Play HQ. This is how we knew about Plug and Play Japan’s program.
Saori: What kind of progress did you have throughout Batch 1?
Yuki: With regards to PoC, we have been collaborating with more than 5 Japanese companies including partners of Plug and Play Japan. We have installed CarVi ADAS technology in each company’s vehicles and can now actually start doing some tests. For us, Plug and Play Japan has played an important role as a matchmaker with large companies.
Plug and Play Japan’s next 3 month accelerator program, Batch 2 will be starting from end of November.
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