“Our vision—saving lives and making driving safer” —Giovanni Blandina, Founder and CEO of EasyRain

When driving on a dry road in the summertime, the driver hardly has to shed a thought about the car’s tires. When a thunderstorm breaks out, or a persistent summer rain fills the grooves in the road, it is quite a different ballgame.

Tires on public roads are legally required to have tread patterns. The primary job of the tread pattern is to expel water, which can affect the contact patch with the road in wet conditions and provide grip and traction.

When driving on wet roads at high speed, a wedge of water can build up between the tire and the road surface. The tire then loses road contact, and the vehicle no longer responds to the steering, causing the car to experience a phenomenon known as aquaplaning or hydroplaning.

Bad weather is one of the leading causes of accidents on roads. According to the U.S Federal Highway Administration (FHWA),nearly 21% or 1,235,000 accidents every year are caused by adverse weather conditions in the U.S alone. Weather-related accidents lead to almost 5,000 fatalities and 418,000 injuries each year in the U.S. Therefore, adapting to weather changes is crucial to reducing accidents for both human drivers and autonomous driving cars.

However, you can improve your safety on wet roads with the help of EasyRain. EasyRain has developed the first active safety system tocounter aquaplaning and make driving on wet roads safer, even for autonomous vehicles. EasyRain’s years of research have enabled its team to develop the first device to increase car safety and performance on wet asphalt through the help of a small and simple system—the Aquaplaning Intelligent Solutions (AIS).

The following excerpts are taken from the conversation with Giovanni Blandina, the Founder and CEO of EasyRain

Q. What would your long-term strategic vision be for your company?

When we approach a customer for the first time, we never try to sell our products: we tell clients the reason for investing so much effort in our mission – saving lives and making driving safer. This is the EasyRain strategy. From my point of view, making them aware their lives will be saved is the best way to introduce EasyRain. I’ll stick to this vision because it has proven to be the right one, at least for a company in the safety field.

I am fully convinced that, as a start-up, EasyRain would have already shut down if it had wrongly approached the market.

We also study the reasons why a potential customer hasn’t signed a deal yet, spending hours and hours on lesson learned sessions intending to improve as a company. I keep this spirit alive also within my team, whether it’s a daily activity, a product development phase, or a concept development phase.

Q. As CEO, how would you ensure success regarding these priorities?

I aim to help my company and team express their maximum potential and pursue personal growth. Day by day, I push my team to understand that they are not working on a project but on a mission—saving lives and making driving safer. Over the years, I’ve treasured my ability to listen to those who could share their skills, and I’ve made the most to meet up with people who have something new to teach me. Each phase of my personal growth path is tied to a specific person who pushed me to become more mature through “strong” methods.

Within the company, my task is to spread the ethics of EasyRain to the team, which can be briefly described as a healthy challenge towards our mission: seeking continuous personal improvement without settling for poor performanceand the utmost ethical respect for any person, gender, culture, etc.

In addition to this, my job is to ensure company growth by developing sustainable growth plans that guarantee the possibility of grounding our technology. The financial aspect is also essential – I am currently working to increase our potential to allow us to ensure success in raising the necessary funds until the company is financially sustainable.

Q. What methods do you use to create strategies to compete with your competitors?

At the moment, EasyRain has no competitors: not a single company has been able to provide specific hardware systems designed to contrast and prevent aquaplaning. This makes EasyRain a unique case in the automotive business. After years of development, growth, and commitment, our clients have recognized our vision: 2020 and 2021 were advantageous as we reached milestones like fitting Aquaplaning Intelligent System (AIS) in a production car or setting up a collaboration with a carmaker.

Having focused since 2013 on aquaplaning, a dangerous phenomenon with no solution, EasyRain has become the leading company in this area. EasyRain has collected expertise, skills, and knowledge in this particular field and is building a competitive advantage over our competitors.

Q. In your view, what risks do you face as an organization? How do you mitigate those risks?

Since the automotive industry is undergoing a digital transformation, EasyRain wants to catch up with new market trends and is developing new 5G, cloud-based technologies intending to improve road safety on low grip surfaces – aquaplaning and snow, ice conditions. V2V, V2X, and Smart Cities will drive EasyRain’s evolution from a hardware-oriented company into full-range hardware, software, and cloud business firm.

I live this moment with incredible enthusiasm because I believe that change is synonymous with opportunity. Over the years, EasyRain can become a leader in researching and developing innovative safety systems. We are already close to introducing the first ones in the series of devices we have developed in the coming few years. This represents an incredible amount of personal success to me, especially considering that at the beginning, the most generous feedback I received was “nice, but you’ll never make it. The automotive world is inviolable. “

Firmly believing in me and the possibility of succeeding has allowed us to make great strides. Hence, the only thing I feel like saying is: “you need to listen to those who think that your idea may not work, but you have to be persistent and strongly believe in yourself when your own has been validated, despite everything, when you are told that it will never work.”

Saving lives through intelligent aquaplaning technology

Giovanni Blandina is the founder and CEO of EasyRain. He founded EasyRain in 2013 to increase car safety and performance on wet asphalt and save lives. He has previously worked at Marelli and served as the team coordinator for FB Corse MotoGP race team.

“AIS is the first system able to counter Aquaplaning.”