Big Data and Indoor Location Analytics Companies are Hot Right Now

May 30, 2013

Today, SOLOMO Technologies received $1.7M (Series A) to expand their indoor location analytics platform for retailers about their visitors and personalized location-based services and offers to mobile shoppers. The SOLOMO platform leverages Wi-Fi indoor location technologies from Cisco's Mobility Services Engine (MSE). The advantage here users don't need a specific app, just have their WiFi enabled.

Just a week ago, LoyalBlocks, a provider of

loyalty marketing solutions for small businesses, received $9M (Series A) to expand the company’s loyalty marketing platform and for scaling the U.S. operations. LoyalBlocks enables automatic interaction with their customers via mobile apps by sending offers and promotions to customers’ mobile devices as soon as they walk through the door. LoyalBlocks leverages Android phones as the "beacon" inside the store, hence, a store owner/manager, can automate everything by just using their Android device.

Back in Feb, Euclid Analytics, who are the "Google Analytics for the physical world" received $17.3M funding round. Euclid is trying to recreate the clickstream for the real world. The team includes one of the founders of Google Analytics and a founding member of people-counter technology company ShopperTrak. Euclid installs sensors in retailers’ locations that can measure how many people walked by a store, how many walked in and for how long they stayed based on when their smartphones emit a kind of radar searching for wireless Internet signals. Similar to the SOLOMO-Cisco solution, someone doesn't have to actually have an app or connect to a store’s WiFi network for Euclid to recognize their device’s unique identifier (specifically its MAC address), which lets the Euclid track the device’s movement as it pings for WiFi within range.

And, last year, Cisco acquired an indoor location analytics start-up ThinkSmart Technologies that delivers location data analysis using Wi-Fi technology and provides advanced customer movement analytics using data from existing wifi infrastructure and smartphones (no app required on the smartphone).

More on these companies and technologies in our report here.