Note: This blog post was originally published on August 26, 2016, at KEC Ventures.
I am excited to announce that KEC Ventures has made an investment in Navisens $2.6 Million seed round. Navisens is based in San Francisco, CA.
Navisens develops a software-only location platform that operates indoors and outdoors without relying on infrastructure located on premise, but instead operates entirely based on the motion sensors in smartphones, smart glasses, and other mobile-computing platforms.
Navisens’ software does not require WiFi Access Points, Bluetooth Beacons, or GPS. It seeks to collapse the barriers to implementation of indoor mapping software applications from an arduous and external-hardware dependent process into a single SDK implementation. It is orders of magnitude cheaper and more efficient than any of the 6 or more indoor mapping software products developed by early stage startups I have assessed since 2012.
It also provides greater flexibility to customers in several different industries who wish to implement its solution in their operations. Simply put the technology is better, and easier to deploy in enterprise field operations that rely on smart mobile devices, than any alternative that currently exists.
My conversations with Dr. Ashod Donikian began in April, through an introduction from a professional services vendor for whom Navisens is a client. He and I had 3 or 4 one-on-one conversations during which we often spent most of the time laughing at one another’s lame jokes while he tried to explain the technology to me.
Once I felt I had a firm grasp of his vision for Navisens, he had a couple more conversations with the rest of our team at KEC Ventures. Things moved quickly once the rest of the team had a chance to hear him tell Navisens’ story.
Ash embodies the qualities of the kind of founder that excites us. Navisens’ product originates from his work as a PhD candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney, in Australia. His research focused on sensing, manned and unmanned vehicles, and assistive technology with applications in densely populated urban settings.
He is highly focused on the product, and on sales . . . Through which he learns what problems the customers Navisens serves need solved. He is an engineer who has demonstrated an ability to sell his product to highly skeptical and demanding enterprise customers. The product is already being applied to solve problems in shopping malls, vehicle navigation, industrial operations, and augmented reality.
He also has a keen sense for team-building, which is how Navisens has accomplished so much on relatively little external capital up to this point. The current Navisens team is a team of 3 engineers. That team will now grow to include some people in marketing and sales, and of course more people in engineering.
Resolute Ventures led the round. KEC Ventures and Resolute are co-investors in Reonomy. It’s great to be able to collaborate with them again in supporting Ashod as he and his team make their long-term vision for Navisens a reality.
Also investing in this round is Bob Zipp from Amicus Capital, Dave Pell from Arba Seed Investment Group, and angel investor Gokul Rajaram. We are also excited to be joining investors from Navisens’ prior round.
KEC Ventures’ investment in Navisens marries our team’s ongoing interest in 3 broad themes; Data and Analytics, Interconnectivity, and Asset Management.
We could not be more excited to “roll up our sleeves and work shoulder-to-shoulder” with Ash and the Navisens team to grow Navisens into a company that transforms and improves the way enterprises manage their assets using the data that they gather from Navisens’ indoor mapping software.
Yes. “Roll up our sleeves and work shoulder-to-shoulder with . . . ” sounds like a blatant exaggeration coming from a VC, but you get the point; We are excited to support Navisens as the team embarks on this ambitious journey.
You can read the press release from Navisens here: Navisens Uses Smartphone Sensors to Create 3-D Tracking Technology; Announces $2.6 Million in Seed Funding.
Here is what other’s have said about Ashod, and Navisens in the past;
- MIT Technology Review: No Map? No GPS? No Problem.
- BBC Technology: Technology That Works Behind Closed Doors.
- Financial Review: Limited Opportunity Drives Australians to Silicon Valley
About Navisens
Navisens is a location platform that operates indoors and outdoors without relying on infrastructure such as WiFi Access Points (APs), Bluetooth Beacons, or GPS. Instead, Navisens processes data from the accelerometers and gyroscopes built into mobile devices, applying Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to achieve much greater accuracy and granularity. Navisens also provides additional information such as the orientation of the device and whether the device is stationary, in-use, or in-motion, all in real-time. For more information, please visit: http://www.navisens.com/