INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
As we increasingly hear about automation, artificial intelligence and robots taking away industrial jobs, Parsable, a San Francisco-based
startup sees a different reality, one with millions of workers who for the most part have been left behind when it comes to bringing digital
transformation to their jobs.
Parsable has developed a Connected Worker platform to help bring high tech solutions to deskless industrial
workers who have been working mostly with paper-based processes
Today, it announced a $40 million Series C cash injection to keep building on that idea.
The round was led by Future Fund with help from B37
and existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Airbus Ventures and Aramco Ventures
Today investment brings the total to nearly $70 million.
The Parsable solution works on almost any smartphone or tablet and is designed to
enter information while walking around in environments where a desktop PC or laptop simply wouldn&t be practical
That means being able to tap, swipe and select easily in a mobile context.
Photo: Parsable
The challenge the company faced was the
perception these workers didn&t deal well with technology
Parsable CEO Lawrence Whittle says the company, which launched in 2013, took its time building its first product because it wanted to give
industrial workers something they actually needed, not what engineers thought they needed
This meant a long period of primary research.
The company learned, it had to be dead simple to allow the industry vets who had been on the
job for 25 or more years to feel comfortable using it out of the box, while also appealing to younger more tech-savvy workers
The goal was making it feel as familiar as Facebook or texting, common applications even older workers were used to using.
&What we are
doing is getting rid of [paper] notebooks for quality, safety and maintenance and providing a digital guide on how to capture work with the
objective of increasing efficiency, reducing safety incidents and increasing quality,& Whittle explained.
He likens this to the idea of
putting a sensor on a machine, but instead they are putting that instrumentation into the hands of the human worker
&We are effectively putting a sensor on humans to give them connectivity and data to execute work in the same way as machines,& he says.
The
company has also made the decision to make the platform flexible to add new technology over time
As an example they support smart glasses, which Whittle says accounts for about 10 percent of its business today
But the founders recognized that reality could change and they wanted to make the platform open enough to take on new technologies as they
become available.
Today the company has 30 enterprise customers with 30,000 registered users on the platform
Customers include Ecolab, Schlumberger, Silgan and Shell
They have around 80 employees, but expect to hit 100 by the end of Q3 this year, Whittle says.
