Best Startup
Ravin AI is an automated vehicle inspection tool that uses advanced computer vision and deep learning to track any car damage while generating a 360° condition report. The app is accessible from stationary hardware, such as CCTV cameras or from a smartphone.
Ravin’s customers include fleet managers, car rental companies, manufacturers, and insurance agents. Our customers can perform a quick and easy inspection upon the return of a vehicle or after an accident with the ease and convenience of their phone.
Tell us about yourself?
After completing my MBA at the London Business School, I went into consulting at Shell Global. I witnessed thousands of individuals filling up on petrol on a daily basis.
My colleagues and I challenged ourselves to find other ways to optimize services for these customers besides filling up on gas.
The first use case involved stationary cameras – as drivers would drive into a station to fill up gas, our cameras would capture damages from cars and highlight the areas that needed to be fixed. Customers were able to maximize their time while they filled up on gas, receiving multiple services in one place.
I saw a real opportunity here, and so did my co-founder, Roman Sandler. We were introduced by mutual friends and believed in our vision and soon-to-be, product. Roman’s background was the exact piece to propel us into the next stage.
He has a Ph.D. in computer vision from The Technion. Before co-founding Ravin, he worked at Yahoo Research and Shutterfly as the machine learning lead.
We started building a prototype at night, once our concept was matured, we pitched to Shell Global and Venture Funds, securing capital from both. We closed a $25M Series A round and have been scaling up ever since.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Take your time to research the market and find the most appropriate design partner. Larger partners may not be the best ones. Look for someone who can help provide direct interactions with users and have a tolerance for early-stage product designs.
What problem does your business solve?
Ravin is bringing transparency and accuracy to vehicle inspections so the process is no longer subjective, expensive and timely.
Through Ravin’s AI and technology, Ravin is able to ensures trust whenever and wherever a vehicle changes hands by turning smart phones or surveillance cameras into powerful inspection systems.
The Ravin app scans, analyzes and reports the type of damage, severity and generates a cost and repair estimate.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
As an avid car fan, I always thought the system was broken. Booking a repair for your car, renting a car or filing an insurance claim always suffered from a lack of transparency. In addition, at Shell Global, I witnessed thousands of individuals filling up on petrol on a daily basis.
My colleagues and I challenged ourselves to find other ways to optimize services for these customers besides filling up on gas. Why not provide additional services to help ease one’s busy days? We started installing stationary cameras and began capturing the condition of a car.
With this information, we were able to provide additional information such as; rust on the car, tires that need more air, or dents on the doors. Customers were able to maximize their time while they filled up on gas, receiving multiple services in one place.
What is your magic sauce?
Ravin’s unique technology is different in that it was built from 360 degree vehicle scans from over 2B organic images. We model the entire vehicle holistically and via this unique process are better equipped to detect smaller damages.
Some of our competitors require heavy and costly hardware installation to capture the correct images. Ravin simply requires a smart phone or small CCTV cameras.
Other competitors analyze the damages from random synthetic images, while Ravin uses pictures from our own database.
Ravin’s technology is cost efficient and flexible, utilizing either mobile phones and/or stationary cameras, which are easy to deploy and a simple installation.
Lastly, Ravin’s technology is trusted by some of the worlds largest automotive and insurance brands including Toyota, Lexus, and KAR Global.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Ravin AI is building the DocuSign experience for vehicles. Its mission is to provide trusted vehicle transactions, through digital inspections performed by anyone.
The transition to digital channels for vehicle shopping, mobility services, and insurance claims, necessitates a more reliable and objective method of inspecting vehicles as they change hands to replace today’s manual and subjective inspections.
Using patented computer vision technology, and hundreds of millions of organic vehicle records, Ravin accurately documents a vehicle’s physical condition.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
The automotive industry is very dynamic and the chip crisis meant lower volumes of vehicles on the road – which resulted in fewer inspections.
However, longer-term trends on digitization of services and “fleetization” of our mobility systems point to more transactions and short-term vehicle usage which translates into a smarter inspection platform.
Covid-19 was also a low point globally but in particular the tourism industry which impacted our largest clients in Car Rental. Large teams were laid off and projects like ours were not a priority to save the business.
This caused us to pivot into other use cases such as remarketing and insurance. As a result, we feel that our business is much stronger today.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
If you work in the line of leasing, rental, auction car companies, and/or insurance agencies, contact us to learn how to expedite the inspection process! Ping us at info@ravin.ai and we’d be happy to set you up with a demo.
