SAN FRANCISCO -

Along with finalizing a commercial agreement with Inmar Intelligence, Modal, which  that provides e-commerce tools to dealers and brands, this week announced its newly appointed chief executive officer.

Taking over the role is an executive who already has been with the company since last August, as chief operating officer Sameer Bhalla has been chosen to be CEO.

According to a news release, Modal founder Aaron Krane will continue as executive chairman.

Modal highlighted that Bhalla has been instrumental in driving the company’s product, engineering and corporate strategy. The company noted that Bhalla possesses more than a decade of high-growth technology expertise as both an exited founder and growth investor, during which he has spearheaded all facets in a technology company’s lifecycle.

Most recently, Bhalla built and exited San Francisco-based Swoop, a vertical SaaS roadside-assistance platform, for which the company raised $3 million in seed capital and scaled up to more than $100 million in gross transaction value and more than 40 employees. Post-acquisition, Bhalla served on the senior executive staff of Agero, an enterprise provider of digital driver-assistance services.

“Since joining the company a year ago, Sameer has been playing a pivotal leadership role, and it’s great to finally make it official by announcing him as Modal’s new CEO,” Krane said in the news release.

“His deep expertise in operations, team building, and partnership development throughout the automotive ecosystem, starting with Inmar Intelligence, will continue to be a tremendous asset to the company’s growth,” Krane continued.

And the company certainly is in growth mode having landed the relationship with Inmar Intelligence.

Modal’s current automotive ecommerce solution encompasses the entire buying process, including trade-in, financing and final purchase documents.

Combining those capabilities with Inmar Intelligence’s deep experience with consumer packaged goods and retail brands to segment and target individual audiences, the companies said their agreement will empower dealers to increase overall ROI by seizing the digital transformation of traditional vehicle buying.

The companies went on to mention their enhanced technology can allow dealers to segment consumers to secure highly qualified leads, deliver personalized messages to engage customers, and increase conversions.

“The COVID crisis has pushed online car-buying to unprecedented levels, and that consumer behavior is here to stay,” said Rob Weisberg, senior vice president of automotive at Inmar Intelligence.

“In working with Modal, we are leveraging aggregated purchase data and AI to drive more qualified visitors to the dealer websites and improve visitor-to-buyer conversion. Simply put, dealers will sell more cars online by driving more customers through the sales funnel at a higher rate,” Weisberg continued in another news release.

Flow Automotive already has enjoyed the potential gains the agreement Inmar Intelligence and Modal could generate.

“The collaboration between Inmar Intelligence and Modal has transformed our Flow Express digital retail experience into a true profit center. Online as a channel now represents over 50% of our sales and over 800 customers a month utilize Modal,” said Flow Automotive president Eric Flow, who is enjoying a 348% return on his investment, according to the other news release.

“This technology has allowed us to remain nimble throughout the pandemic, providing a safe contact-free buying experience that our customers expect, and we are thrilled with our success so far,” Flow went on to say.

Now as CEO, Bhalla is looking to create more success stories like Flow Automotive through the collaboration with Inmar Intelligence.

“Under Aaron’s strong leadership in an ever-consolidating market, we’ve proudly remained one of the few independent and privately held key players, experiencing an 800 percent increase in online transactions year-on-year, which Inmar Intelligence will accelerate,” Bhalla said.

“By leveraging Inmar’s segmentation, targeting, and lifecycle-attribution capabilities, we’re catapulting analytics to the forefront. More than a transaction, it’s connecting with the right customer at the right time, and we are already seeing spikes in order conversion,” he went on to say.