Telogis has raised $93 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to deepen its location-based services platform for operations that have large mobile workforces. The funding will further help fuel the company’s expansion in the anticipation of an IPO next year.
The company, founded in 2001, is at the intersection of a megashift in how people work. At the heart of this shift are a new class of mobile devices, ubiquitous connectivity, and the cloud. Companies are just learning how to leverage these new mobile capabilities but adoption is unprecedented. Telogis lists 16 markets that it serves, ranging from utilities to waste management. A big part of its business is working with vehicle manufacturers such as Ford, which is integrating Telogis technology into its commercial trucks.
The round is the first outside investment from a venture capitalist for Telogis, which has bootstrapped its business and is profitable, according to CEO David Cozzens who I interviewed over the phone tonight with Chief Financial Officer Kyle Messman. Cozzens said they expect $85 million in revenues this year and more than $100 million next year.
The company is taking the round now due to the market opportunity and the prestige and experience with SaaS businesses that KPCB provides. Morgan Stanley did the placement with KPCB which will position the company well for its IPO.
“The cross-over of the institutions is what matters,” Messman said.
The Telogis SaaS allows companies to manage their workforce in unprecedented ways. Customers are using GPS, for example, to monitor drivers. Trucks are connected to mobile networks that can track their performance. In this new reality, everything becomes a data object. A manager may be able to determine if a driver is speeding in icy conditions based upon the data collected and analyzed from the vehicle.
For example, the company’s Telogis Fleet service uses spatial clustering so managers can see thousands of vehicles on one screen, drilling down to any truck out on the road.
Telogis competes with the any number of apps that consumers and businesses use. The company lists hardware manufacturers that it partners with for its service. But most are black box providers. Cozzens said the company is also integrating with the iOS and Android platforms which is evident with offerings such as Telogis Supervisor. Telogis does help open up rugged laptops or industrial-grade hand-held devices but a wave of consumer-oriented apps will certainly emerge in force over the next few years. They will be cheaper and often more flexible, allowing commercial businesses to deploy services without needing to integrate with technologies built for the pre-smartphone age.
But for large fleet operations and mobile workforces, Telogis has a leading market position for location-based mobile intelligence that should help as it readies for an IPO next year.