IndoorAtlas Receives US $10 Million Investment From Baidu and Signs Exclusive Agreement for Chinese Market

BEIJING, CHINA and MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA and OULU, FINLAND--(Marketwired - September 02, 2014) - IndoorAtlas, the global leader in magnetic positioning technology for indoor location, today announced that it has agreed to a $10 million investment from Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), the world's leading Chinese search engine. IndoorAtlas also announced it is signing an exclusive agreement for the Chinese market with Baidu. Through this partnership, Baidu intends to strengthen its indoor mapping offering with cutting-edge technology that will be unique in China.

IndoorAtlas uses earth's geomagnetic field to pinpoint the exact location inside a building with an accuracy of two meters.

"We are excited to have an Internet company like Baidu as our partner as we grow and expand our footprint," said Professor Janne Haverinen, Founder & CEO of IndoorAtlas. "With this partnership, we now have access to over 1.34 billion potential subscribers at one go. We see this as a huge opportunity not just to make a mark in Asia, but globally, and to make indoor location services ubiquitous and available to everyone."

The company will be using the funding towards ramping up R&D, engineering and business development in the US, Asia, and Europe.

"IndoorAtlas's accuracy and scalability is second to none and clearly complements Baidu's existing mobile Location Based Services (LBS) and maps offering," said Baidu vice president Liu Jun, who leads the company's LBS business unit. "IndoorAtlas's intellectual property portfolio and global geographical coverage will be instrumental in helping us at Baidu build out our LBS platform for local merchants in China and abroad."

"IndoorAtlas is very excited to have Baidu, one of strongest Internet players not only in China but also globally to participate in our Series A round," said Inka Mero, Chairwoman of IndoorAtlas and Co-Founder and Chairwoman of Koppicatch. Inka has played a key role in the growth and expansion of IndoorAtlas in Europe and US since its inception, and led the discussions with Baidu for this funding round. "This represents an infusion of funds to aggressively continue our growth in the US and also gives us a unique opportunity to make quick inroads into Asia, specifically the Chinese market, which in many ways is leading the way for indoor location based services. From the very beginning of discussions, we felt there is great match in terms of strategy, competencies and assets. We could not have asked for a better investor and partner in terms of indoor location based services expertise, sheer scale of operation and industry specific know-how."