LifeSight, an artificial intelligence-powered location intelligence platform based in Singapore, recently raised $2 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by shareholders of Provident Capital Partners, an investment firm based in Indonesia.
The funds raised will be used to grow its engineering and data science abilities at its Bengaluru development centre as well as expand operations in other Asian markets in the next couple of years, according to a statement released by the company.
LifeSight, which is run by LifeSight Pte. Ltd, saw the day in September 2017 by Rohit Maheswaran and Tobin Thomas. Before founding LifeSight, Maheswaran was operating as Chief Product Officer at Ebizu, an ad-tech company, while co-founder Thomas was responsible of sales and operations at AskMe, the controversial e-commerce company based in Malaysia.
The Singapore-based company offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) helping brands, retailers and agencies reach a broader offline audience, optimized media spending and take better business decisions. Additionally, the firm assists marketers in using proprietary data sets to target, understand and measure potential customers with their geo-behavioral AI platform.
As long time players of the APAC marketing and advertising industry, my peers and I often deliberated about the disjointed manner in which digital ads were being served, the outdated attribution models, and the missed opportunity for ethical, opt-in location intelligence to guide business decisions in this region. So we created LifeSight with the core aim of democratizing location intelligence with an easy to use SaaS platform,
co-founder Tobin Thomas shared in the statement.
The commercial launch of the company’s service happened three months ago, and the company claims to have since caught a significant presence in Singapore, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. Their location intelligence allows companies to develop business insights and take decision according to the geospatial data received.
Provident Capital’s predominantly invests in sectors such as telecommunications, infrastructure, mining, real estate, plantation and biofuels. The businesses it invests in are mostly uprising from Indonesia. However, the VC firm’s portfolio includes companies such as Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com, Indonesian telecom giant Tower Bersanna Group and mining company Merdeka Copper Gold, among others.
The location intelligence is a growing market nowadays, with major players such as Cisco, Oracle, IBM, Pitney Bowes, Teradata Corp, Microsoft, SAP and many more tech companies.
Early stage startups are also venturing in this new market segment such as HyperTrack Inc., a US-and India based startup, that allows users to track their ordered items in real time. The startup recently raised its Series A fund from Nexus Venture Partners and Founders Fund last year. Founders Fund is an important addition as a strategic partner as it previously backed companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Spotify and social media giant Facebook.
Three years ago, in 2015, US- and India-based startup KeepTrax Inc. raised $1 million in seed funding from Naya Ventures. In 2014, AdNear, a big data company based in Bengaluru- and Singapore received $19 million as Series B funding from Telstra Ventures and Global Brain Corp.