Field service engineers may not be the first group of customers who come to mind when you think about lucrative opportunities in B2B technology. But that same blind point speaks of the occasion in space for those who step and aim for “the job.”
One of the players in that space, Pamper “Who builds software for the care of people to take out images and quickly access information about the machines they repair,” announced on Tuesday that it raised a fresh round of $ 230 million from KKR to expand their business.
XOI will immediately use part of that funding for immediate growth: it buys another company in space, Specific, to increase its data with more information about about 85,000 additional model families and related data. XOI plans to integrate this data into its existing platform both to give more devices-specific instructions and other data to its users, as well as to build additional data to predict maintenance, updates and other work.
Xoi does not reveal the price it pays for specific, nor what its own assessment will be after the new funding. From what we understand, the agreement makes KKR a majority owner of Xoi, who has earned less than $ 20 million before now. We also understand that the Specifix price is less than half of the $ 230 million that KKR sets. This is Xoi’s first acquisition.
The deal is the latest row and development for a company that has lasted since 2010 and has started life in some different field than today.
Headquartered in Nashville, Xoi was originally called Pairrasight, and then Xoeye (both of which were Presented by Techcrunch over the years). In this incarnation, the company built hardware – specifically, connected 3D glasses initially for DIY on electrical equipment, fountains, air conditioning, coffee or other machines.
But hardware is indeed difficult, and that business has failed to thrive. First prices were too high for their budget conscious clients, and the formal factors were too clumsy when sturdy to the level they had to stay in one piece on the spot.
“If they looked as fresh as his glasses,” CEO and co-founder Aaron Salow said, pointing to his investor, KKR partner Jake Heller, “maybe it would work.”
Meanwhile, the startup has seen an opportunity to create programs that have captured all the same data as the glasses, but could be used on the phones and tablets that its target users have begun to adopt.
This led to Xoeye to drop the “eye” for “me”, which general manager and co -founder Aaron Salow says that now stands for “intelligence”, and the company has taken away.
Companies like Xoi and Specific are part of a growing number of companies building solutions for what was generally called “Field -service”Or“frontline“Worker, people who do not sit at desks, who are customers facing or out in the field working in physical environments. What differentiates them from others in that same space, however, is that a large number of programs focus on certain areas and not others.
“Many of them were built to arrange business operations, plan,
To broadcast, “Salow said,” but arrive at the site, and you are ignored. It is an indispensable space. ”
There is no one to deny that it can be a challenge to sell data, business intelligence and other less tangible assets to a market anchored in very physical work, but as the industry continues as Xoi to help the engineers perform their work.
“This company has a real religion, taking its ‘lab’ and putting it on the field, inserting it and on the jobs that, in this case, are really uncomfortable, difficult to reach,” said Heller in an interview. “The magic in this software is that it provides people uncomfortable all day to comfort the rest of our lives.”
