Zendrive Lands $13.5 Million From Sherpa, BMW iVentures to Make Roads Safer

Zendrive, a San Francisco startup that aims to improve car safety by offering analytics on how drivers are doing, has landed $13.5 million in fresh funding in a round led by Sherpa Capital’s Shervin Pishevar.

The company’s technology uses a range of sensors to measure actions like acceleration, braking, swerving and phone use. The data can be tapped by insurers, those who run commercial fleets or cities looking to find problem roads. Its early partners include Shuddle and HopSkipDrive, both of which provide on-demand rides for kids, as well as roadside assistance company Urgent.ly and driver education company eDriving.

“Zendrive represents the natural evolution of safety for the next wave of transportation innovation,” Pishevar said in a statement. “Stacked with mobile and data experts from Google and Facebook, this team has introduced the first significant driver and passenger safety innovation since airbags.”

Other investors include Nyca Partners and Thomvest Ventures as well as existing investors First Round Capital, BMW iVentures and Bill Ford’s Fontinalis Partners, among others.

Zendrive CEO Jonathan Matus told Re/code that the new money will help the company roughly double from its current staff of 35 as it continues to build out the product.

While other companies, such as Automatic, focus on devices that plug into a car’s diagnostic port, ZenDrive runs its app on smartphones. In addition to the fact that nearly every driver has a phone with them, Matus says that a lot of crashes are caused by phone use, something Zendrive’s app can detect.

“It just makes no sense to go the hardware route,” he said.

Here’s Matus speaking at last October’s Code/Mobile about the changes coming to the auto industry:

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via