A pandemic couldn’t slow popular transportation technology last year. Lytx set a new revenue record in 2020, driven by a 63% increase in new customers along with more demand from its current clients, the transportation technology company announced on April 14.
The video telematics company, which is powered by machine vision and artificial intelligence (MV+AI) technology, also reported its growth trajectory continued in Q1 2021. During the first three months of this year, Lytx reporting a new quarterly record of more than 100,000 new and upgraded subscriptions to its technology.
“In a year filled with uncertainty, we accelerated our growth by focusing on delivering value to clients as they rose to the challenge brought on by the global crises of 2020,” Brandon Nixon, chairman and CEO of Lytx, said.
Lytx continued to expand its global team and increase investment in research and development by 27% in 2020,
“Thanks to the largest-ever investment in video telematics from Permira that valued Lytx in excess of $2.5 billion,” Nixon said, “We were able to drive even greater investment in our capabilities to help fleets improve their operations, enhance their profitability, and better protect their most valuable assets – their employees.”
With the record revenue in 2020, Lytx added nearly 750 new clients — a 63% increase over new customers it signed up in 2019 — including Coca-Cola Beverages Florida, the Kroger Fulfillment Network, Badger Daylighting Corp., Foodliner Inc., Love’s Travel Stops and Country Stores Inc., and Lyreco UK.
Lytx also is reporting a 105% increase in bookings of small business clients. The company also said it upgraded a record 125,000 vehicles to Lytx’s MV+AI technology, expanding on an existing client base leveraging the company’s most advanced offering.
The company completed 180,000 installations in 2020, the most it had ever done in one calendar year. Among the other larger fleets that have long-term commitments with Lytx — through upgrades or expansions — include Waste Management National Services Inc., Waste Connections Inc., ARS Corp., Ryder Integrated Logistics, U.S. Xpress Enterprises, and Ruan Transportation Management Systems.
Lytx reported that it boosted R&D spending by 27% in 2020 over the prior year, making innovation by far the company’s single greatest area of investment. It also acquired the Surfsight product line to expand distribution channels in global markets.
Lytx MV+AI expands
Using technology it has been developing for more than a decade to identify and capture in-vehicle risk with unmatched accuracy, Lytx expanded its MV+AI offerings last year. It enhanced its offering by adding the capability to detect five additional behaviors using MV+AI: handheld device, no seat belt, food or drink, driver smoking, and inattentiveness.
With MV+AI, Lytx said that fleets are able to detect risks much more quickly — in some cases as much as 21 times faster — than relying on accelerometer data alone. In addition, pairing MV+AI with real-time audio alerts helped select clients immediately reduce risky behaviors, such as handheld device use, by as much as 50%, the company reported.
Throughout 2020, Lytx added 33 billion miles of commercial driving data, bringing the total number of driving miles analyzed by Lytx to over 150 billion. The company leveraged the insights generated by its data to drive unmatched accuracy in its risk-detection algorithms and fuel product development. Among the many innovations released this past year:
- Launched Lytx Lab, a first-of-its-kind data dashboard that gives clients access to view risk maps, plot vehicle trips around risk points, and check traffic or weather with near real-time road view images from more than 350,000 cameras.
- Paired driver-view MV+AI triggers with real-time, in-vehicle alerts that help drivers recognize patterns of risky driving and self-correct in the moment.
- Introduced the ability to quantify the duration and percentage of drive time a driver engaged in risky behavior, using MV+AI to provide a more complete view of risk.
- Developed Risk ID Without Recording to detect patterns of risky driving without recording video of the driver, an industry-first feature offering additional privacy for drivers.
- Launched the Lytx Driver App, designed to help drivers take charge of their driving safety by reviewing their own video and performance stats.
- Added Lytx Badge driver identification capabilities using machine vision to detect QR codes, making it easier for fleets to manage driver-to-vehicle assignments.
- Released the Lytx Unassigned Drive Time service, a first-of-its-kind offering designed to save fleets time, reduce labor costs, and improve ELD compliance.
- Advanced integration features that enable best-in-class video services with Geotab application and ELD.
Looking ahead In 2021
So far, things have not slowed down for Lytx in 2021. The company reported strong Q1 results that include a new quarterly sales record of more than 100,000 new and upgrade subscriptions.
In March, Lytx was named a top ten Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in Data Science for its data-driven innovation in MV+AI capabilities released throughout 2020. Lytx has also been recognized as a Great Place to Work in all three countries in which it has locations, including the United States, United Kingdom, and Israel.
