Boston-based retail indoor location company ByteLight announced Friday morning it has raised a $3 million Series A round. A mix of venture capital firms and individuals contributed to this round of financing, including Flywheel Ventures, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, the eCoast Angel Network, Sand Hills Angels and Google Ventures investor Don Dodge. With some more money in the bank, the company plans to accelerate growth in the retail sector and further develop its platform.
"We are using our Series A funding to build our product, marketing and business development teams as we conclude pilots and move into fully deployed solutions," ByteLight CEO Dan Ryan told BostInno via email.
Though the company began in May 2011, ByteLight popped up out of stealth mode back in October 2012 when it raised $1.25 million in seed capital from VantagePoint Capital Partners. The company used the funds to bolster the development of its patented technology, which creates an GPS-like indoor positioning system using LED lighting that can be used to individualize and enhance the buying experience for consumers.
ByteLight is currently piloting its indoor location solution with global retailers, including three of the top 10, allowing merchants to deliver deals to customers over their smartphones at critical points in the buying cycle. For example, as a shopper turned into a new aisle at the grocery store, he could automatically be sent a coupon to use on an item that, given his past purchases, he might be interested in, or that he buys frequently.
"The opportunity for ByteLight is to leverage our technology to evolve into the essential platform for contextually-driven indoor experiences. We are building contextual graph of the physical world," explained Ryan. "While the apps of today are installed on smartphones, the apps of tomorrow will be installed on locations. Personal computing devices will interact with the environment around them, delivering experiential benefit to users and economic benefit to venue owners. The ability to determine indoor location, which enables contextual understanding and ultimately drives action, will be a fundamental component of future solutions."
The leveraging of mobile technology within the indoor location space is seeing a good deal of attention from leading investors and companies, including Apple, who recently introduced its own location-tracking retail sales device iBeacon, and PayPal Media Network, which announced its similarly named, bluetooth-powered Beacon back in September. By 2018, the indoor location market is predicted to reach $4 billion in value.
With the company's round of funding today and its differentiated, low-cost solution, ByteLight appears to have an early, and defendable, start in this up-and-coming field. The company currently employs eight people full-time.
"I believe we are in the first inning of a multi-billion dollar transformation of how we shop, socialize and interact with the world," Ryan said.
