JACKSONVILLE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 14, 2026--
AirPro Diagnostics (“AirPro”), a leader in validated, advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) scanning, diagnostics, and calibration solutions, and a portfolio company of Rotunda Capital Partners (“Rotunda”), has announced the appointment of Driaan Du Toit as Chief Executive Officer.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260114918605/en/
Du Toit is a seasoned multinational technology executive with over 20 years of leadership experience in the automotive repair, fleet and insurance industries. He has served as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Revenue Officer, and has held other senior executive roles where he developed and executed strategies to support the automotive repair process with technology in practical and scalable ways.
“As vehicles continue to increase in complexity, the accuracy and consistency of Advanced Driver Assistance System diagnostics and calibrations are no longer optional and have become critical to vehicle, passenger and motorist safety,” said Lonnie Margol, AirPro Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board. “Driaan brings a comprehensive perspective on how repair process optimization, claims, operations and enterprise-scale technology improve repair quality, cycle time, and vehicle safety,” added Ryan Aprill, Partner at Rotunda.
“AirPro sits at the intersection of safety, technology, and repair excellence,” said Driaan Du Toit, CEO of AirPro Diagnostics. “What drew me to this opportunity is the significant growth potential in both local and global markets, combined with AirPro’s unwavering commitment to supporting repairers and industry stakeholders with high-quality, market leading validated, solutions. These solutions align with OEM requirements and insurer expectations, while also reflecting the realities of today’s ADAS-equipped vehicles. There are meaningful opportunities to improve the status quo in the industry and AirPro is well positioned to deliver.”
“Driaan’s extensive leadership experience positions him well to help AirPro further advance intelligent, easy-to-operate ADAS solutions that reduce friction, improve workflow efficiency, ensure accurate validated, diagnostics and calibrations, and deliver value across the entire repair ecosystem,” said Bob Wickham, Managing Partner at Rotunda.
Under Du Toit’s leadership, AirPro Diagnostics will continue investing in scalable ADAS solutions, workflow efficiency, and collaborative approaches locally and globally, that support repairers —while aligning the broader repair ecosystem and keeping vehicle safety at the center of every decision.
About AirPro Diagnostics
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, AirPro Diagnostics is a provider of remote and on-site scanning, diagnostics, and Advanced Driver Assistance System (“ADAS”) calibration solutions for the automotive repair industry. Using proprietary technology and a team of 200+ experienced and highly trained brand specialist ADAS technicians, AirPro provides automotive repair professionals across the national collision repair, glass replacement and other automotive repair end markets with fast, precise, and OEM-compliant ADAS solutions, ensuring vehicles are restored to pre-repair condition safely and efficiently. For more information, visit www.airprodiagnostics.com.
About Rotunda Capital Partners
Rotunda Capital Partners is an operationally oriented private equity firm focused on transforming family-founder owned companies into dynamic, data-driven platforms able to achieve and manage significant growth. Since its founding in 2009, Rotunda has partnered with management teams to build great businesses within three primary sectors: value-added distribution, asset-light logistics and industrial, business & residential services. Rotunda strives to achieve replicable results by implementing its Rotunda Performance System to create strategic alignment, develop lean processes and create robust, data-driven infrastructures. For more information, visit www.rotundacapital.com.
Driaan Du Toit
BEIJING (AP) — In China, the names of things are often either ornately poetic or jarringly direct. A new, wildly popular app among young Chinese people is definitively the latter.
It's called, simply, “Are You Dead?"
In a vast country whose young people are increasingly on the move, the new, one-button app — which has taken the country by digital storm this month — is essentially exactly what it says it is. People who live alone in far-off cities and may be at risk — or just perceived as such by friends or relatives — can push an outsized green circle on their phone screens and send proof of life over the network to a friend or loved one. The cost: 8 yuan (about $1.10).
It's simple and straightforward — essentially a 21st-century Chinese digital version of those American pendants with an alert button on them for senior citizens that gave birth to the famed TV commercial: “I've fallen, and I can't get up!”
Developed by three young people in their 20s, “Are You Dead?” became the most downloaded paid app on the Apple App Store in China last week, according to local media reports. It is also becoming a top download in places as diverse as Singapore and the Netherlands, Britain and India and the United States — in line with the developers' attitude that loneliness and safety aren't just Chinese issues.
“Every country has young people who move to big cities to chase their dreams,” Ian Lü, 29, one of the app's developers, said Thursday.
Lü, who worked and lived alone in the southern city of Shenzhen for five years, experienced such loneliness himself. He said the need for a frictionless check-in is especially strong among introverts. “It's unrealistic,” he said, “to message people every day just to tell them you're still alive.”
Against the backdrop of modern and increasingly frenetic Chinese life, the market for the app is understandable.
Traditionally, Chinese families have tended to live together or at least in close proximity across generations — something embedded deep in the nation's culture until recent years. That has changed in the last few decades with urbanization and rapid economic growth that have sent many Chinese to join what is effectively a diaspora within their own nation — and taken hundreds of millions far from parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
Today, the country has more than 100 million households with only one person, according to an annual report from the National Bureau of Statistics of China in 2024.
Consider Chen Xingyu, 32, who has lived on her own for years in Kunming, the capital of southern China’s Yunnan province. “It is new and funny. The name ’Are You Dead?' is very interesting,” Chen said.
Chen, a “lying flat” practitioner who has rejected the grueling, fast-paced career of many in her age group, would try the app but worries about data security. “Assuming many who want to try are women users, if information of such detail about users gets leaked, that’d be terrible,” she said.
Yuan Sangsang, a Shanghai designer, has been living on her own for a decade and describes herself as a “single cow and horse.” She's not hoping the app will save her life — only help her relatives in the event that she does, in fact, expire alone.
"I just don’t want to die with no dignity, like the body gets rotten and smelly before it is found," said Yuan, 38. “That would be unfair for the ones who have to deal with it.”
While such an app might at first seem best suited to elderly people — regardless of their smartphone literacy — all reports indicate that “Are You Dead?” is being snapped up by younger people as the wry equivalent of a social media check-in.
“Some netizens say that the 'Are you dead?' greeting feels like a carefree joke between close friends — both heartfelt and gives a sense of unguarded ease,” the business website Yicai, the Chinese Business Network, said in a commentary. ""It likely explains why so many young people unanimously like this app."
The commentary, by writer He Tao, went further in analyzing the cultural landscape. He wrote that the app's immediate success “serves as a darkly humorous social metaphor, reminding us to pay attention to the living conditions and inner world of contemporary young people. Those who downloaded it clearly need more than just a functional security measure; they crave a signal of being seen and understood.”
Death is a taboo subject in Chinese culture, and the word itself is shunned to the point where many buildings in China have no fourth floor because the word for “four” and the word for “death” sound the same — “si.” Lü acknowledged that the app's name sparked public pressure.
“Death is an issue every one of us has to face,” he said. “Only when you truly understand death do you start thinking about how long you can exist in this world, and how you want to realize the value of your life.”
A few days ago, though, the developers said on their official account on China’s Weibo social platform that they’d pivot to a new name. Their choice: the more cryptic “Demumu,” which they said they hoped could "serve more solo dwellers globally.”
Then, a twist: Late Wednesday, the app team posted on its Weibo account that workshopping the name Demumu didn’t turn out “as well as expected.” The app team is offering a reward for whoever offers a new name that will be picked this weekend. Lü said more than 10,000 people have weighed in.
The reward for the new moniker: $96 — or, in China, 666 yuan.
Fu Ting reported from Washington. AP researcher Shihuan Chen in Beijing contributed.
The app Are You Dead? is seen on a smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A woman looks at her smartphone in a cafe in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A woman looks at her smartphone outside a restaurant in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man looks down near his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
A man reacts while holding his smartphone in Beijing, China, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
