The “privacy-centric analysis platform for the natural world” as Ariadne Maps defines itself, raised 2 million euros in a seed funding round led by Marathon VC while EIT Digital, Singapore-based Sasya Terra and angel investor Raoul Oberman also participated in the round.
The company focuses on areas and places with strong pedestrian traffic and helps companies understand the flow of people, in real time, helping asset optimization and providing an optimal experience to visitors. The funding is expected to help the company further develop and expand its products.
To date, these extremely useful analyses are done with not so reliable, accurate and incompatible with privacy, methods, including cameras, beacons, Wi-Fi and apps. Ariadne Maps was founded in 2019 by George Pipelidis (CEO) and Nikos Tsiamitros (CTO) coming from Technische Universität München where they worked on precision location technologies for indoor spaces and according to them the technology they have developed is superior to similar ones offered by behemoths such as IBM, Cisco and Google.
Ariadne Maps’ devices installed in the area of interest use the signals of users – visitors emitted by Smartphones (GSM, LTE, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) and special artificial intelligence algorithms are processed anonymously so that the whole process complies with the GDPR2 regulation, thus ensuring the receipt of zero personal data.
The traffic data and the relevant trends given by the indoor location platform – data analytics startup, such as the number of unique visitors per day, the duration of the average visit, the hourly occupancy, the heat maps, the moving trajectories of unique visitors, etc. enable companies to analyze the flow of visitors and identify patterns that can then be targeted with special offers or new advertising points and of course increase their revenue.
“Ariadne Maps brings online analytics to the real world. George Pipelidis and Nikos Tsiamitros, utilizing their research in one of the leading academic institutions in Europe, have created a unique product that every real estate operator needs. We are excited about the company’s prospects and very happy to be part of it,” said Georgios Tziralis, a partner at Marathon Venture Capital.