Target Partners, MIG Fonds, BayBG and Don Dodge Invest in 3D Indoor Mapping and Navigation Platform
Munich, December 15, 2015: Munich-based high-tech startup NavVis GmbH (www.navvis.com) today announced it has raised €7.5 million in growth capital. The new Series B round of financing was led by Munich-based venture capital firm Target Partners (www.targetpartners.de), with participation from existing investors MIG Fonds (www.mig-fonds.de) and BayBG Bayerische Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH (www.baybg.de) as well as new investor Don Dodge, Developer Evangelist at Google (www.crunchbase.com/person/don-dodge). Founded in 2013, NavVis develops innovative products and applications for centimeter-accurate 3D mapping, viewing and navigation of indoor spaces. The new funds will be used to ramp up production, expand sales activities in Germany and other major global markets, such as China, Japan, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and the USA, and to further develop NavVis’s unique technology.
NavVis’s customers are high profile international companies from the automotive, insurance, retail, transportation and logistics sectors. “Our technology is aimed at a global market that is worth billions,” says Felix Reinshagen, NavVis co-founder and CEO. “Up to this point, hardly any indoor spaces, such as factories, office buildings, event venues, shopping centers or trade fair halls, have been digitally captured.”
With the patent-pending 3D mapping trolley from NavVis, a mobile scanner equipped with lasers and cameras, the entire shipping exhibition of the Deutsches Museum in Munich was mapped in 3D in less than one hour and then made available online via the NavVis platform (www.deutsches-museum.de/rundgang). The museum retains ownership of its data. The next stage of the NavVis technology will enable visual navigation of already mapped buildings via a smartphone, without the need for any additional infrastructure such as Wi-Fi, or GPS. The corresponding smartphone app is due to go live soon. In the future, NavVis will also serve as a platform for many location-based services in buildings, from logistics, repairs and maintenance work through to facility management and seamless navigation.
“The NavVis technology is easy to use, significantly faster than existing technologies and up to a hundred times more affordable,” said Kurt Müller, Partner at new investor Target Partners. “We are excited to be investing in a top-notch team that has developed the first end-to-end solution for 3D indoor mapping and navigation.”
Don Dodge, Developer Evangelist at Google, said: “I am excited about investing in NavVis. NavVis is like Google StreetView in 3D for indoors, and will enable hundreds of new applications and businesses. NavVis Indoor location and mapping will have a bigger impact than maps or GPS.”
Georg Schroth, Sebastian Hilsenbeck and Robert Huitl came up with the idea for NavVis while carrying out research in the fields of robotics, computer vision and machine learning at the Technical University of Munich. Felix Reinshagen, who holds a PhD in economics and worked at McKinsey for nearly a decade joined the team by way of a joint consultancy project. In 2013, the four founded NavVis GmbH; this was followed by the first round of financing in 2014. Over the past year, NavVis has experienced rapid growth, expanding from 20 employees to 60 today.
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NavVis GmbH develops innovative products and applications for mapping and navigation of indoor spaces that are accurate down to the centimeter. NavVis facilitates simple orientation, even in complex building systems such as factories and exhibition halls, airports, railway stations, shopping centers, museums and much more. In a very brief time, the patent-pending Trolley can map an environment by using laser scanners. At the same time, cameras generate a dense network of high-definition 720-degree photographs of the entire interior space. A browser-based IndoorViewer enables looking around, path-finding, interaction with popular Point of Interest features (e.g. video or audio data) as well as precise point-to-point measurements. The next generation of NavVis will also enable navigation of indoor spaces via smartphone (turn-by-turn). Similar to human orientation, this visual position determination technology does not require any additional infrastructure in the building, such as Wi-Fi Hotspots, RFID or Bluetooth.
Dr. Hans Jürgen Croissant Communications for NavVis Tel.: +49 89 716925020 hj.croissant@navvis.com
With €300 million under management, Target Partners is one of the leading early-stage venture capital firms in Germany. Target Partners invests in new start-up and early-stage companies and supports them with venture capital during their build-out and expansion phases. With many years of experience as managers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, the team at Target Partners supports entrepreneurs in developing and marketing products and services, building organizations, raising money and taking companies public in Europe and the United States.
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Sprachperlen GmbH Agency for enterprise communication Helena Pröpster Ehrengutstraße 5 80469 Munich, Germany Tel.: +49 89 411 53 199 Email: targetpartners@sprachperlen.de
MIG Verwaltungs AG (“MIG AG”) is a leading German venture capital firm managing a series of VC funds. Investments are made in high-technology companies across a variety of development stages and industries. MIG AG’s portfolio currently comprises 26 companies. For further information: www.mig.ag, www.mig-fonds.de
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Through its investments, BayBG is currently strengthening the capital base of 500 medium-sized businesses. The BayBG is thus the one of the market leader among medium-sized enterprise-oriented investment companies. Through its commitment, the BayBG enables the companies to realize expansion and innovation plans, make corporate succession plans as well as optimize the capital structure and implement of turnaround measures.
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