Launched in 2010, the Viennese company indoo.rs has grown into a specialist for indoor navigation with around 20 employees. With the help of investments by Speedinvest, Tecnet Equity and Techinvest, the startup of founders Bernd Gruber and Markus Krainz has won customers such as Billa, San Francisco International Airport and Amtrak.
In 2017, a large research project with the support of the FFG of one million euros was started. This was to be able to make predictions about the behavior of visitors to a building with the help of machine learning.
Software is integrated into ArcGIS Indoors
Now indoo.rs is sold to the US company Esri (Environmental Systems Research Institute). This software company from California specializes in geo-information. The indoo.rs software will be part of ArcGIS Indoors in the future. It is an indoor mapping product that provides interactive indoor maps of corporate, retail and business locations, airports, hospitals, venues, universities, and more.
About the purchase price, the companies have agreed to secrecy. According to the company register, the two founders Gruber and Krainz were the last to hold a stake of around 23 percent in the company. The majority of the company shares were distributed among the lenders who have come on board over the years. For Speedinvest it is the ninth exit for its first fund, Speedinvest 1.
It was not always rosy for indoo.rs. An over-indebtedness within the meaning of the insolvency law does not exist. This was recorded in the balance sheet for the financial year 2017 which was later submitted in September 2018. This ended with a heavy minus. Further financing by indoo.rs existing shareholders in July 2018 in the form of a € 410,000 convertible loan secured indoo.rs further development of its business model.
For 2019, a positive operating cash flow was targeted. A mid to long term major order from Esri secured the startup a very high base load. Now the Americans have snapped.
Austria becomes the development center for Esri
“Their indoor positioning system (IPS) technology, experience and leadership will be of tremendous benefit to our customers who want to use GIS indoors,” said Brian Cross, director of Professional Services at Esri . The startup indoo.rs is located in Lower Austria, a developer site in Vienna and an international office in San Francisco. The acquired subsidiary becomes a research and development center for Esri.
“We have seen the IPS market explode in recent years. And our business customers have shown great demand for deep integration of IPS technology to unlock the benefits of such a solution at all levels of their business,” said Rainer Wolfsberger, who has been CEO of indoo.rs for some time.