Navigine, a Skolkovo resident startup that makes indoor navigation and tracking systems, has raised $900,000 in funding from an international syndicate of investors led by the Innovestor co-investment service.
Navigine's technology can be used to analyse shoppers' movements within a store and to target advertising accordingly. Photo: U.S. Air Force.
The investors providing equity funding include private backers from Finland and Russia, as well as the U.S. angel investor John Ason, who was Navigine’s mentor on the Starta Accelerator programme in New York last year. Both Ason and Innovestor, which invests in the Nordic countries and Russia, already invested in Navigine last year as part of a syndicate deal worth $400,000.
“We are impressed by the results Navigine’s founders and team have demonstrated over the last year,” Wilhelm Lindholm, a partner and chief investment officer at Innovestor, was quoted as saying in a statement published on Innovestor’s website.
“The company has developed a competitive technology, and displayed consistent progress in its commercialization,” he said.
Navigine, a resident of the Skolkovo Foundation’s IT cluster, creates systems for indoor tracking and navigation that work regardless of the external environment. Its products can be used in industry, such as to track goods in warehouses and factories, as well as in transport hubs, malls and museums to track and analyse visitor behaviour and allow targeted marketing and advertisements, including via push notifications.
"After three years of active operations in Russia, we’ve already obtained multiple requests from various industries on usage of indoor navigation and adjacent location based services,” said Alexey Panyov, CEO of Navigine.
“Our current target is international expansion with a focus on the U.S. and European markets. The new investment round will be mostly allocated to grow our international sales and marketing team, as well as to speed up deployments with large enterprise clients,” he told Sk.ru.
“Another part of the funding will be dedicated to enhancing our Navigine product that complements our precise positioning platform with online-to-offline marketing and an analytics platform,” said Panyov.
“In order to streamline our product development process, we have moved our Moscow office to the Skolkovo Technopark, which allows us to benefit from the fast-developing innovation ecosystem," he added.
The market for indoor positioning systems and location-based services related to advertising is developing rapidly, the Innovestor statement said.
“Navigine is the market leader in Russia, and has a growing international customer base. The funding round will enable the company to further accelerate its ambitious growth initiatives, primarily in U.S. and European markets,” said Innovestor, which has offices in Helsinki, Stockholm and Moscow.
Navigine’s solutions are in use in 20 countries. The company's latest product is an online to offline marketing and analytics tool that enable marketers to target advertising based on highly precise customer location data.
“In just a few years, with the support of the Skolkovo Foundation, Navigine has become an outstanding combination of perfectly honed mathematical algorithms, a strong team and clear development strategy,” said Sergei Voinov, head of IoT, electronics and data storage and transmission systems within the Skolkovo Foundation’s IT cluster.
“These assets make Navigine an excellent company for raising venture capital, which has already been confirmed by a consortium of international investors. The fact that Innovestor is investing in this company again is particularly important,” he told Sk.ru.
Navigine is headquartered in New York, with its R&D centre located in Moscow and a sales office in Berlin.