Every entrepreneur wants a starting level, shares Eliron Ekstein, however from there, you discover an excellent greater world of alternative. His starting level got here from in search of methods to develop companies at Shell fuel stations and realizing that AI automobile inspections might assist the drivers there. The thought blossomed into RAVIN.AI, the place Ekstein is now CEO. With the RAVIN platform, a automobile’s bodily situation could be assessed by way of an online device and algorithm. This helps fleet managers and automobile rental firms save time and register harm and in addition helps folks collect extra info on a used automobile remotely, he shares. By doing extra thorough analysis earlier than seeing the automobile bodily, purchasers can save time, effort, and emotional funding in the method. This permits a remaining resolution to be made extra shortly. Ekstein is worked up concerning the automotive house as a result of the impression on folks and the economic system is big.
Tell me a bit about your self. Why are you so obsessed with vehicles and AI?
I’m half British, half Israeli. I’ve spent most of my profession in the UK. My training comes from finance and enterprise. I did my MBA in London Business School. I ended up in a place with Shell, the power firm. We figured that we’ve got greater than 25 million drivers every day driving by means of our fuel stations and we promote them simply oil merchandise and coffees. Shell sells extra espresso than Starbucks. We have this captive viewers, which is very large. We thought, “What can we offer them other than coffee?” We ended up investing in firms which have all these cool options. I ended up as a CEO for a few of these merchandise and corporations. One of them was FarePilot, attempting to promote a software program that helps skilled drivers optimize between the completely different experience hailing companies.
When we spun that out and I went again to Shell, RAVIN got here up. We thought, “Can we actually film those cars and tell something about the cars to those drivers?” We can inform them, for instance, that they have rust they must maintain. Or one thing that’s simply flawed in your car.
It makes a number of sense. How many occasions can we really go to a mechanic to verify on our tires? If we get a response that we have to change, it is in all probability lengthy overdue.
Correct. That’s the starting level. That’s the attention-grabbing factor about being an entrepreneur: you’ve acquired to have a starting level. But then as soon as you dive in, you suddenly realize there’s this whole world of alternative.
Once you have a look at car inspections, you realize {that a} car is definitely a really costly asset. For many households, it is the second costliest asset they’re going to ever personal. It’s all the time uncovered to the weather. It’s all the time uncovered to this random bicycle that would run into it. The value of changing elements, the price of repairing, the price of the car being off the street is gigantic. It’s an actual ache. So that acquired us going.
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Eliron Ekstein, co-founder and CEO of RAVIN.AI
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How did you resolve the place to focus?
That’s when you step back and use your consulting skills. You think about the market size and where there is room to enter. It took us a while to figure out the exact verticals and use cases we wanted to focus on. The first use case is fleets and car rental where there’s a lot of transition and handoffs of vehicles. We want to give a snapshot to the owner of how well the driver’s been handling the vehicle. The second use case was used car assessment. We realized that some of our scans could shed light into the condition of a vehicle for an unprofessional buyer.
You would imagine that people would have a lot of great tools to make good decisions on a vehicle purchase. This is a really big deal.
Absolutely. When you think about the process today, you invest a little bit of research upfront before you pick a vehicle to actually go and investigate further. You only get to the in-depth inspection when it’s almost too late and you are already invested in the process. What we do with RAVIN is we give more tools for ordinary people to look at a vehicle remotely, before they emotionally invest and invest their time and effort into it.
Is this product already reside? Is this making an impression already?
Absolutely. On the fleet side, we’ve been live with different companies. We have a client in New York called Buggy TLC, and they rent cars to Uber and Lyft drivers. We’ve seen the accountability going up and level of damage on the vehicles going down, thanks to using the tool. In the used car space, we have partnerships like with KAR Global that operate used car markets across North America. This tool saves time and adds transparency to the transaction.
It sounds like a great problem to solve. But why is this the most exciting thing for you right now?
I think the role of cars and trucks in our system, in our economy, is massive. Probably hundreds of miles were driven just for you in the last three days. The impact that transportation and vehicles have on our economy is enormous. If we can generate savings, if we can actually use less vehicles for more of society’s demands, that’s a major improvement on human life.
You’re changing the way that we are thinking through this process of car inspections. Where does the bigger step function, if you had to guess?
It’s something that is embedded in different steps in the process. I’ll give you an example. You’re researching your next used car online; this is another tool that helps you filter out the bad and focus on the good ones that meet your requirements. It saves you lots of time and effort. You only travel and meet the seller that you feel strongly about. You also spend less money on physical inspections. You’re creating a lot of transparency that creates, in turn, an efficiency. On the fleet side, lots of savings on driving back and forth to get a car estimated for repair. Lots of different efficiency points once you adopt this kind of tool.
Different fleet managers, car providers, purchasers, what is their interaction with your product today?
The way we built it as a platform, the most common use is that you get a web tool and you can click on a link. Once you pick up a car or return a car, it opens the camera on your browser and you’re then guided by the tool to document the vehicle. Using computer vision, an algorithm that we use on the front end and also in the cloud, we can create a profile of that vehicle and identify potential areas of problems. In the rental experience, you’ll have a log of the condition of the vehicle over time. In a used car setting, you’ll have a snapshot of the vehicle at that time.
However, if you think a few years down the line, you could start creating a database for the vehicles of the world and start logging all these inspections as the history of that vehicle.
You provide some information through the inspection. Is this enough for them to make a decision? Do they then need to take it to a thorough in-person inspection?
For a buyer of a vehicle, in many cases, our inspection will be enough for them to make the decision. We can give an indication that translates into a very tangible outcome, which is a grading of the vehicle. Our algorithm is sophisticated enough to give that grade, and it would be roughly what a human professional inspector would give that vehicle.
If you’re extrapolating this further down the line, what is your vision here? How do you grow RAVIN.AI, and what are you trying to make it to be?
The idea is that everywhere that you hand over custody on a vehicle, the tool is so seamlessly embedded in every process and every transaction that it is becoming a stamp. Obviously, we’ll need to add much more tools around mechanical condition, electric conditions, battery condition for electric vehicles.
But at the least on the bodily standing of the car, we are able to already create a very good illustration, which expedites the transaction, which creates a peace of thoughts. I believe the use instances will proceed rising as we see extra shared mobility. You’re not renting from Hertz and Avis; you’re renting from a neighbor.
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Michael Matias
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Michael Matias, Forbes 30 Under 30, is the creator of Age is Only an Int: Lessons I Learned as a Young Entrepreneur. He research Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, is a Venture Partner at J-Ventures and was an engineer at Hippo Insurance. Matias beforehand served as an officer in the 8200 unit. 20MinuteLeaders is a tech entrepreneurship interview collection that includes one-on-one interviews with fascinating founders, innovators and thought leaders sharing their journeys and experiences.
Contributing editors: Michael Matias, Megan Ryan