Spireon Inc., a portfolio company of Bertram Capital, announced the acquisition of privately held Inilex, a leader in next-generation GPS recovery software solutions. Their main product, Skylink, enables new car dealers to significantly increase their financial and insurance (“F&I”) revenue with high-value GPS-based add-on services.
The acquisition enables Spireon to uniquely connect all major segments of the vehicle life cycle, ranging from new car dealers to used car dealers, fleets, lenders, insurance companies, and rental car fleets, providing a comprehensive connected car solution. The acquisition expands Spireon’s strategy to offer rich services and business intelligence across any kind of vehicle.
“We are very excited to extend Spireon’s Internet of Things (“IoT”) platform with the addition of Inilex’s new car dealer solutions,” said Jared Ruger, Partner at Bertram Capital. “We see a tremendous opportunity to introduce additional connected car applications to Spireon’s installed base of 2.3 million active vehicle subscribers.”
Skylink leapfrogs traditional theft recovery services by replacing legacy radio sets that have limited coverage with next-generation GPS applications that can be tracked with any internet connected device. Instead of relying on proprietary technology that only works with a small number of police vehicles, Skylink offers ubiquitous coverage using national cellular networks.
And with the combination of Skylink’s dedicated 24/7 call recovery center that works directly with local law enforcement and cloud-based phone applications, vehicles are recovered within minutes instead of waiting days for a dedicated police car to search manually for a radio signal.
Skylink provides significantly greater value to the dealer by also providing lot management functionality and enabling the dealer to sell compelling add-on consumer applications.
“The acquisition of Skylink expands Spireon’s reach into the new car dealer segment, and automatically positions it as a leader across the vehicle life cycle,” said Marc Brungger, CEO of Spireon. “New car dealers have strongly told us they need new ways to increase revenue by tapping into the trend for offering consumer applications that can fully utilize the data coming from connected cars.”
