First of all, congrats on the launch guys!
There are several people within this space and going beyond the fact that, they’ve got a nice generic .com (important for this type of product) which the public can easily remember they actually have an interesting product which, so far appears better executed than the others in this space. As well as that they also have an interesting team behind them as well for instance their CEO Thejo Kote, was previously a founder of NextDrop[1] which provides real value to people in India by informing them when nearby water is available (In case you’re not aware of this, despite having water pipes to them, water in India is only available for a few hours (usually once or twice a week) at a time and they have no way of knowing when that time actually is).
The product is useful for some of the reasons listed on their website such as the Crash Alert, Engine Health, Where You Parked etc. Although the biggest interest they will receive is through, external parties such as Rental Companies and Car Insurance providers etc (In otherwords, I predict their market is far bigger on the business than the Consumer side although, in some instances they overlap). The Car Insurance feature may actually become their biggest ‘feature’ for consumers in the future going forward “With Automatic you can get an Engine Health Check, Remember Where You Parked, In The Event of a Crash Inform the Right People and more importantly save $100’s on your Car Insurance!”
For instance, in the UK there are a lot of car insurance providers who give discounts to drivers who get a telematics policy aka install a “black box” within their car (something similar to Automatic without the additional features). These telematics policies in the UK are offered in 3 categories (the Behaviour-Based is the most common):
- Curfew-Based Policies – if you don’t drive between 11pm – 5am you get a discount
- Low Mileage Policies
- Behaviour-Based Policies (which Automatic does with their “Drive Score” points system) which considers how will you corner, brake and speed etc so the better you drive your insurance becomes cheaper, you drive badly you get penalised with higher rates etc.
[1] http://www.nextdrop.org