You know the main problem with GPS, right? It doesn’t work indoors. How many times did you have to look around for ages trying to find your way out of a stadium, or of an enormous railway station maze? Luckily, Navigine is going to solve these problems – and many more – with its engine allowing for precise indoor positioning.
“Among navigation applications we chose indoor navigation because at the time of launch indoor location market started to emerge and was expected to grow with a fast pace,” says Alexey Panyov, the CEO and CTO of Navigine. He has over 8 years of experience in special navigation software development. The Navigine co-founder, Oleg Demidov, is a serial entrepreneur specializing in international consulting and business development of IT companies. They both got their PhDs in Physics and Maths at the Moscow State University.
Their product is an SDK that allows for creating mobile apps using indoor navigation. This core function uses both the external infrastructure (iBeacons, Wi-Fi) and the smartphone features (accelerometers, gyroscopes or compass). Additionally, Navigine offers a marketing platform for indoor push notifications, comprehensive analytics of the movement of both visitors and staff, and tracking individual objects inside the building in real time. It is a perfect solution for those who need indoor tracking as the basis of their applications – they can purchase this SDK and roll out immediately. The Navigine team claims that they have “one of the best TCO and ROI for technological partners”.
The primary target of Navigine are sport venues such as large stadiums. Indoor navigation can be a lifesaver for all who have problems with finding the way in and out and simultaneously provides the event organizers with an ability to track and analyze the behavior of visitors. Additionally, real-time tracking of players during games and practices gives the coach a solid amount of data regarding parameters such as speed, distance covered or presence in zones, making it easier to identify the weak points of the team.
One of the strengths of Navigine is that it can be used anywhere – at the airports or railway stations, in hospitals or in malls. For example, their product makes it fairly simple to build a motion management system for logistic processes in a large warehouse or to create an interactive navigation tool for the blind in an airport terminal.
Navigine was launched in 2011. Since then, the company raised $660K in total from John Ason, Innovestor, AYR Ventures and Starta Capital. This startup has already proven cash positive in Europe, with a track record of over 200 installations, 10 unique mobile apps built on the core of Navigine and 20 other apps still in their beta stage.
