Since beacons communicate with smart devices and enable a closer engagement with one’s environment, this technology is said to become the future of data transfer. Polish Kontakt.io realised a potential in this sector and founded a startup focused on beacon solutions. Recently, they announced a two million dollars investment from Sunstone Capital.
Starting the company with their own money in 2013, Szymon Niemczura, co-founder and CEO of Kontakt.io, said that they are now planning to operate on a global scale. “We are thrilled to be working with Sunstone Capital, who share our limitless ambition. We’re here to build a global infrastructure for micro-location services.” In addition, an expansion of the product line is in planning.
Looking at the bigger picture
The business started off as an indoor navigation service for visually impaired people but focusing on beacons gave them more opportunities beyond their initial goal. “We have not forgotten our origins e.g. one of our main partner projects is BlindSquare who is working on helping blind people live with more independence using our beacon technology.”
Beacons are devices that constantly send out signals which can be detected by, for example, smartphones. “[T]his is what the internet of things means – everything is tagged, readable, and tracked through the internet. Our technology is a key component to making this happen.”
Big names under customers
“Bluetooth Low Energy and iBeacon are the building blocks of the next wave of computing. Notifications and event triggers based on proximity have the potential to revolutionise mobile applications,” Dr. Max Niederhofer, General partner at Sunstone Capital, explained their investment.
Kontakt.io provides hardware as well as software solutions and counts big names such as Google, Facebook, Apple, SAP, Siemens to their customers.
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