Hong Kong-based venture capital firm Beyond Ventures on Tuesday announced that it has led a $3 million investment in Mapxus, an indoor mapping service provider.
Mapxus solutions produce digital and panoramic indoor maps to facilitate a cross-platform indoor-positioning capability.
The startup will invest the fresh capital in research and development (R&D), sales, marketing and operational functions as well as for expanding to Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
“We have a clear vision of how to create a smart city by working closely with government bodies, shopping malls, transport utilities, hospitals, and other entities. The idea is to facilitate the creation of a barrier-free smart city and catalyze a variety of stakeholders to develop meaningful mobile applications that will solve problems for people with, and without, disabilities,” Mapxus founder and CEO John Chan.
The startup also integrates technologies, including universal WiFi-fingerprinting, sensor fusion and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop smart city solutions for citizens.
“The software-based infrastructure and hardware-free solutions crafted by Mapxus are able to bring together an indoor mapping community of government bodies, commercial organizations and social enterprises. The way the company already harnesses the capabilities of existing Wi-Fi infrastructure is able to reduce deployment costs by up to 90 per cent,” Lap Man, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Beyond Ventures, said in a statement.
Beyond Ventures was founded in 2017 by Hong Kong VC firm e-Garden Ventures, several local serial entrepreneurs and Chinese-based investment firm Hony Capital, which manages more than $10 billion in assets.
The VC firm has invested 240 million yuan ($35.8 million) across 13 companies including Chinese food delivery management startup Candao, Chinese AI startup SenseTime, DNA-testing startup Prenetics, CMOS chipmaker SmartSense Tech, taxi-hailing app HKTaxi and e-commerce platform YOHO.