We heard earlier this year that the insurer Direct Line was making a 15 per cent equity investment in telematics firm The Floow, and it looks like it’s already starting to pay off for tracking company. Already Floow has announced an expansion of its work force with six new permanent team members being added to its roster. They’ll be working out of the main headquarters in Sheffield, UK.
Floow isn’t just hiring on nobodies either, but well respected developers from other companies. As BDaily reports, one of the biggest names is the android developer and system administrator, Bartosz Debski and development analyst Dr Daniel Moyo, both of whom are expected to help manage the current platform of Floow products, as well as further their development to new versions. Web developer Arran Scott has also been brought on board to help improve The Floow’s internet presence and potentially help it bring in new customers.
Other recent hires at the company include data analyst Luke Willis and Java developer Carl Ibbotson, who have slotted in well with the company. On top of that a second web developer (or first, depending on how your view of chronology works) named Joshua Obaro joined the team back in the early months of this year’s summer.
Aldo Monteforte, CEO and co-founder of The Floow, said: “We are delighted to welcome so many new faces to our team.
“We employ experts in the fields of computer science, data mining, automotive electronics and user experience design, and each of the new appointments brings a wealth of experience and understanding to these areas and their role.
“The expansion of the team will support our global reach to a host of blue chip insurance firms worldwide and allow us to continue our research into the methods of capturing and analysing data.“
The investment is also said to have allowed Floow to put aside some liquid capital in order to accelerate the development of its analytics software and back end management tools. These are offered to customers in a variety of packages, along with the traditional tracking hardware, in order to enable multiple savings in various areas of business operation.
What will be interesting to watch is Direct Line’s response to the expansion and whether it will lead to the insurer investing more in the Floow as the years go on. It has the potential to invest many more millions, potentially even taking over the telematics company. However, that could negatively impact The Floow which has a diverse client base, some of whom may not want to be spending money with it, if they knew that all of the profit was heading into Direct Line’s pocket, since they could compete with the insurer in several fields.
However it does seem to be the way of the telematics industry at the moment that lots of the younger, smaller firms are being bought up by bigger conglomerates and technology giants. It’s somewhat surprising Apple and Google haven’t invested more in the field considering their love of headbutting over new and evolving technologies.
