Remote assistance innovator adds Larsen & Toubro, Engage as strategic investors
Help Lightning, one of the leading providers of remote visual assistance software, has added $3 million in growth equity to its Series A funding. The additional capital represents continued investment in remote visual support and opportunity for the technologies that support it, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Larsen & Toubro is a Mumbai, India-based engineering & infrastructure conglomerate and has led Help Lightning’s Series A2.
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The additional financing comes less than a year after Help Lightning announced its $8 million Series A led by return investor Resolve. Help Lightning added two new strategic investors in this latest round: Mumbai, India-based engineering & infrastructure conglomerate Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Atlanta, Georgia-based Engage. The investment will catalyze Help Lightning’s growth initiatives and further accelerate the company’s aggressive product road map.
The latest round of investment follows Help Lightning’s second straight year of double-digit revenue growth as it continues to innovate within the fast growing remote assistance software market. This growth represents a 104% increase in the number of Help Lightning customers during that same period.
Help Lightning’s next-generation platform uses augmented reality to virtually place an expert on-site anytime, anywhere. The company’s patented merged reality feature provides a video-based collaborative environment where a person needing help “meets” an expert on a video call. Using merged reality (the merging of two video streams) and 3D annotation, the two parties can communicate in real time, as if they were working side by side. The expert can virtually “reach out and touch” whatever the person needing help is working on. The expert can also use hand gestures and even bring in tools, parts or instructions to quickly resolve problems.
“Companies across the globe have been forced to replace long-standing operations with technologies that provide an effective alternative in how on- and off-site services are managed,” said Dr. Hasit Joshipura, SVP & Head, Corporate Centre & Innovation Fund, L&T. “Help Lightning provides a powerful, more efficient alternative to small- and enterprise-level field service operations, eliminating the need for an expert to be on-site and minimizing pandemic-specific disruptions. Our investment in Help Lightning was driven by the demonstrated ROI businesses with the company’s patented remote visual assistance software and its proven effectiveness in the growing virtual assistance market.”
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Remote assistance software has been particularly vital during the pandemic, where stay-at-home orders and social distancing mandates have been enforced. L&T led this Series A2 for Help Lightning and the benefits of the technology have resonated all the more in recent weeks as India has grappled with surging COVID cases.
“The market was growing before COVID but the pandemic understandably accelerated digital transformation and has served as a global catalyst for the adoption of remote assistance software,” said Help Lightning CEO Gary York. “The market is only getting stronger as companies realize business operations aren’t going back to the way they were before, and customers see the value and outcomes remote assistance software can offer. This new growth capital of ours is a testament to the market growth and we are incredibly proud of and grateful for our partnerships with all of our investors – existing and new.”
Help Lightning currently serves Fortune 500 customers and well-known names such as Cox Communications, Ricoh, Siemens Healthineers and BUNN. This year alone, Help Lightning has announced partnerships with Genesys and Zebra Technologies, and won two Gold Stevie awards in the mobile operations management solution and manufacturing solution categories at the 19th Annual American Business Awards.
