TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oriient, pioneers of high-performance indoor GPS, announced today the closing of $4m in seed funding from F2 Capital and innogy Innovation Hub, the accelerator and venture capital arm of innogy SE, a leading German energy company. The company also announced it is already working with the world’s largest retailers, as it scales to unlock the power of indoor navigation by delivering an experience similar to online search, to in-store shoppers.
Oriient provides enterprise level businesses including retailers, airports, malls and wholesalers, with the ability to allow their customers to navigate large areas and locate items with pin-point accuracy. The service is the first solution of its kind requiring no installation nor hardware: instead of using beacons or WiFi, it is based on just Earth’s magnetic field and users’ smartphones.
“Amazon Go put the retail industry in a frenzy – big box retail is focusing on saving people the five minutes it takes to checkout, but what about the hour spent trying to find everything in the first place?” said Mickey Balter, Founder and CEO of Oriient. “We started Oriient to solve this problem and have cracked the code with technology that is both highly accurate, cost effective and easy to deploy.”
“It is with technologies like Oriient that retailers put customers front-of-mind and can provide shoppers and employees alike an easier, more convenient experience inside their store, and not only does Oriient recover money that has been left on the table through untraceable products, it also helps retailers and brands to upsell via their instant targeted promotion feature. That’s why they have been a perfect fit for our METRO Accelerator for Retail,” said Sylvia Dudek, from METRO.
Jonny Saacks, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at F2 Capital added: “Oriient is finally solving a long-standing problem in the market providing accurate indoor positioning without the need to deploy any costly infrastructure. Applicable to many use cases across multiple industries, we are excited to support the talented team at Oriient with their vision to become a standard service offered in all major stores, factories and airports around the world”.
“Oriient’s technology has the potential to radically enhance the consumer experience across many settings and, as their pilots highlight, is attracting significant interest from forward-thinking customer-focused businesses,” said Annemie Ress, Managing Director for innogy Innovation Hub. “We are pleased to be investing in Oriient and supporting Mickey and the team as they continue to grow their customer base and enter new markets.”
About Oriient
Oriient is a Tel-Aviv based technology company. It is a pioneer of magnetic field-based indoor positioning. Oriient’s service powers location-aware mobile apps in any indoor environment.
Focused on the retail and smart buildings verticals, Oriient helps people find products, places and other people in difficult to navigate indoor environments.
About F2 Capital
F2 Capital is the leading seed stage venture capital fund in Israel, backing frontier technology companies at the junction of Big Data, AI, and Connectivity. F2 Capital offers elite mentorship, a global network of multi-national partners and Israel’s top accelerator program to help bold founders build game-changing companies. Established in 2017, F2 Capital is managed by Barak Rabinowitz, Jonny Saacks and Eddy Shalev, a team of highly experienced and founder-friendly investors.
About innogy Innovation Hub
innogy Innovation Hub believes that new technologies, business models and consumption patterns will redefine the energy market of the future. We believe this future will be driven by four core global trends; decarbonisation, decentralisation, digitisation and democratisation. innogy Innovation Hub’s mission is to drive this vision for the future of energy by being a sector disruptor: by identifying the game-changing technologies, ideas, individuals and businesses that will help build that future, wherever they are, providing funding, mentoring and a platform for co-creation, collaboration and convergence.
The innogy Innovation Hub has created a €162m portfolio (as of December 2018) through investing in disruptive individuals, start-ups and early stage businesses, and has provided opportunities for nearly 90 start-up and scale-up companies to collaborate. It is headquartered in Berlin, with teams across Europe including in London, Warsaw and Essen, as well as offices in California (Palo Alto) and Israel (Tel Aviv).
The innogy Innovation Hub is funded by innogy SE, a leading German energy company, with revenues of around 37 billion euros (2018), around 43,000 employees as well as activities in 16 European countries and in new markets such as Australia, Canada and the USA. For more information visit: https://innovationhub.innogy.com
