Photo Oriient
Oriient, a Tel Aviv-based high-performance indoor GPS company, announced it raised $4 million in seed funding from F2 Capital and innogy Innovation Hub — which is the accelerator and venture capital arm of innogy SE (German energy company).
“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 Oriient founder and CEO Mickey Balter in a statement. “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.”
Oriient also announced it is working with some of the world’s largest retailers. And the company is scaling to unlock the power of indoor navigation by delivering an experience that is similar to online search for in-store shoppers.
“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,” added METRO’s Sylvia Dudek.
Retailers, airports, malls, and wholesalers work with Oriient for allowing their customers to navigate large areas and for locating items with pin-point accuracy.
“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,” explained F2 Capital co-founder and managing partner Jonathan Saacks.
And Oriient is considered the first solution of its kind without requiring installation or hardware. Rather than using beacons or Wi-Fi, it is based on the Earth’s magnetic field and users’ smartphones.
“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,” explained innogy Innovation Hub Managing Director Annemie Ress. “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.”
