The location of things (LoT) market — which comprises technology that enables developers to make use of geographic data — is projected to be worth $71.6 billion by 2025, driven by the proliferation of connected devices, high-speed networks, and personalized services. Mapping and navigation apps like Google Maps, Uber, and Waze made up 32.6 percent of the global LoT sector in 2017, followed closely by manufacturing, asset management, marketing, and industrial platforms. But they’re only the tip of a sizeable iceberg.
MapAnything (formerly Cloudbilt) wants to power them all — and with a nine-year start and fresh capital under its belt, it’s well on its way. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based startup today announced that it has raised $42.5 million in a Series C funding round led by GM Ventures — General Motors’ investment arm — and Emerge executive chairman Andrew Leto, with participation from existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Greycroft, Harbert Growth Partners, and David Stern.
Leto has joined MapAnything’s board of directors.
CEO and cofounder John Stewart said MapAnything will use the funding — which follows on the heels of a $33.1 million Series B completed last year, bringing the company’s total haul to $82.9 million — to expand its reach in “key markets,” and to broaden its developer community while deepening relationships with the over 2,100 enterprises currently leveraging its infrastructure. Additionally, MapAnything plans to increase its research and development efforts to explore “new market opportunities” and technological advancements.
“The ability of B2B enterprises to derive value from location is a game-changer for organizations with large mobile workforces,” Stewart said. “But historically, geographic intelligence has been limited to those with advanced analytics … experience. MapAnything is democratizing location data to accelerate the productivity of mobile workers and enable customer experiences that exceed expectations.”
MapAnything’s platform offers a patent-pending routing and scheduling engine, integrated GPS tracking capabilities, and a location-based workflow layer that Stewart said helps answer “complex spatial questions” and drive prompter customer service. At its most basic, it transforms database entries into waypoints. But it also enables geofencing triggers and other contextual hooks, along with sophisticated routing that takes into account distance, cost, and time in determining the best way to accomplish multiple navigational goals.”
For example, MapAnything’s Salesforce, ServiceNow, and ServiceMax components allow sales managers to see customers and leads on a map-centric user interface and to sync in-the-field activities with a Foursquare-like check-in and check-out system. Fleet management companies, meanwhile, can use it to visualize vehicles’ geographic whereabouts and trigger work orders when drivers leave a defined geographical area.
MapAnything claims its clients see customer interactions increase by up to 25 percent.
“In a world where everyone and everything is connected, location-based insights open up entirely new opportunities to transform the customer experience,” said Mike Rosenbaum, executive vice president of product at Salesforce. “We’re excited about the continued impact MapAnything’s location-based solutions, combined with the world’s No. 1 CRM, will deliver for customers.”
In June 2017, MapAnything inked an agreement with GM to integrate MapAnything Live, its automated business solutions product, with the OnStar systems in the automaker’s more than 11 million 4G LTE-connected cars. According to a survey recently conducted by GM, more than 90 percent of fleet managers believe that such connectivity has the biggest potential to “transform” their operations.
“We have seen firsthand how the most sophisticated fleet managers in the world rely on connectivity to optimize their investments in vehicles and people,” said Ed Peper, vice president of GM’s Fleet division, “and we’re just starting to scratch the surface of what’s possible using sophisticated tools like MapAnything.”
MapAnything additionally offers APIs for computing the shortest distances and fastest travel times between locations, and for managing last-mile logistical challenges and multi-day, multi-vehicle routing. In the coming months, MapAnything plans to launch APIs for gathering historic GPS location and traffic, live GPS position, capacity planning, and real-time geofencing, along with routing and scheduling services.
MapAnything’s Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2,000 partners span financial, manufacturing, and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries and include Lyft, Capital One, American Express, Proctor & Gamble, Airgas, Shaw, Inmar, and Mohawk, to name a few. The company employs more than 150 people worldwide.
Source: VentureBeat
To Read Our Daily News Updates, Please Visit Inventiva Or Subscribe Our Newsletter & Push.
