San Diego AI startup and Atlas Van Lines team up to make moving less painful – San Diego Union-Tribune

Moving can be such a pain. A San Diego AI startup company just announced a deal with a major moving company to help make the process easier.

The startup, Yembo, uses AI to analyze videos of people’s homes before they hire a mover. Moving companies then use the information gathered by Yembo to produce estimates and moving plans. For example, how big of a truck is needed? Is it a two- or three-person job? And exactly how many boxes will your kid’s Squishmallow collection require?

Yembo has been tapped by Atlas Van Lines, which will “deploy an AI-enhanced survey tool across its service offerings to provide customers with immediate and meticulous moving estimates,” Atlas wrote in a news release.

The AI software will “analyze video footage of clients’ belongings to ensure precise volume and item … assessments,” the release continued.

For Atlas Van Lines, the collaboration is a way to leapfrog technologically and make moving easier for customers and its agents.

“Atlas is dedicated to staying ahead of the curve in technology innovations and tools to continue refining the professional moving experience,” Calvin Goins, a product manager for Atlas, wrote in an email. “Yembo provides several benefits to Atlas, including saving time in surveys, configuring shipments, and providing accurate cost and time estimates. These advantages are directly seen as time and cost savings for the customer.”

The service is already available through some Atlas Van Lines agents in San Diego, and it will be rolled out to Atlas’ nearly 350 agents across the U.S. and Canada in the coming months.

Yembo’s value add

Planning a move “is a very analog process today,” said Sid Mohan, Yembo’s co-founder and CEO.

The “traditional moving company experience is you enter your name on the website. If you want a quote, someone calls you and they schedule an on-site visit. Depending on how many people they have and how much they are booked out, this could take up to two weeks. And then they give you a time frame — at 12 o’clock to 4 o’clock — and you have to stay at home.”

At the home visit, he added, there’s typically a “person with a clipboard, pen and paper walking through your home, counting furniture items, and then they give you a quote. So it’s like several days to several weeks before you can get a quote.”

Yembo’s process can take as little as half an hour, Mohan estimates.

With this technology Atlas can “send a link and the users can record a video from their phones, and our technology creates the inventory list.” From there, the company can create a quote within minutes. It can also be used to inform decisions about what equipment is needed in a move, what objects might need special handing, and items’ conditions — a key detail in case of a claim.

Yembo’s AI tool can accurately confirm the dimensions and weights of large pieces of furniture, appliances “and even clothing or books,” Goins wrote.

“We helped simplify all of those processes by connecting the entire process through technology and AI,” Mohan said. The company also sells its AI tools for the insurance market, to help with underwriting and claims, he added.

Darren D’hont, the owner of San Diego Moving Company, founded in 2012, said Yembo’s automated estimation tool sounds “beneficial, for sure.”

“Videos go a long way. So I think that would certainly help with the process,” he said.

He raised one concern: Automation removes a human element. For example, his team asks why someone is moving and takes that context into consideration — someone might be buying a first home, downsizing or going through a life transition.

“I like to talk with the person and build rapport,” he said. But, D’hont added, he could see companies doing both — building rapport and also using AI to increase efficiency.

Customers have different needs, he said. Some prefer personal interaction. For others, time is of the essence.

“I mean, it’s really up to the client,” D’hont said.

Originally Published: April 26, 2024 at 8:30 AM PST