Q&A with Kellie Lindsay, Director of Strategic Partnerships

We catch up with our new Director of Strategic Partnerships, Kellie Lindsay.

Why did you join Autotech?

Kellie: As one who thrives on “what’s next?”, I was drawn to Autotech’s passion to catalyze innovation in the ground transport and mobility space. My strategy and business development experience spans across the domains of manufacturing, chemical, mechanical, electrical and software engineering in automotive, transportation and mobility.  Autotech touches all of this with a best-in-class team that is plugged into Silicon Valley and the global start-up community like none other. What a beautiful landscape within which to work! 

I’m excited to join this collaborative team that nurtures both its portfolio companies and its corporate investors to create new business models, products and opportunities to grow. Autotech’s track record is very strong, and I am confident that the team’s experience and approach will continue to deliver.

What mobility trends or innovations should we look out for in 2021?

Kellie: The pandemic has changed consumer behaviors and accelerated the demand for efficiencies in the movement of goods.  We are going to see many logistics innovations leading real world implementation of CASED (connected, autonomous, shared, electrified and digitized) applications in this space.

The convergence of regulations, charging infrastructure, battery cost reduction, connected vehicle data, and new marketplace trading platforms are driving EV adoption.  While luxury EV’s captured our attention at first, it is now the pickup trucks, work trucks, delivery fleets and construction vehicles that we’ll see driving EV technology and acceptance.  

Many of Autotech’s portfolio partners are enabling these logistics and EV evolutions, such as: SafeAI enabling autonomous solutions for heavy vehicles, Work Truck Solutions for commercial vehicle merchandising, HDVI enabling lower cost insurance for fleet operators, Indie Semiconductor low cost custom chips for auto electronics,  ShipHawk automating and reducing costs of shipping and fulfillment, TruckLabs’ connected aerodynamic devices and Volta Charging for urban charging infrastructure.

Watch for CEOs to embrace constant technological change by accelerating Industry X.O across all functions of the organization. Leaders will want to be aware of early-stage developments so they can monitor progress, adjust strategies, partner or invest to keep pace with change. Mature firms are learning the hard way that building tech in-house can be slow and fraught with cost and resource challenges and they are becoming more open to leverage external innovations for internal savings and enhanced product offerings.  I also see companies building new teams and roles to manage these strategic and third-party relationships.   

Finding people to “do the work” is a challenge augmented by the pandemic that will create issues as the manufacturing world goes back online.  There are many business and manufacturing processes that suffer from redundant manual work and human error that can be digitally transformed in weeks or a few months.  An example is KlearNow, who automates customs paperwork using AI for logistics efficiencies. Another, Cogniac, automates quality inspection processes using deep neural networks within vision systems to see defects or audit a situation (like a kit) while learning and training itself to perform more reliably than humans. 

ESG (Environmental, Societal and Governance) focus is also becoming increasingly important to both financial and corporate investors… and me! So, innovations that create “green efficiency”, help people and operate with trust will be an important factor in future investment considerations. 

As the current president of Automotive Women’s Alliance Foundation, another personal passion of mine is to support efforts to advance and empower women in automotive, transport and mobility.  We provide scholarships, mentoring, professional development and coaching through an incredible network of women volunteers from every part of the industry and every level of experience from early career to the boardroom.  Our website is awafoundation.org.