Edinburgh firm sensewhere gets Chinese investment

Sensewhere CEO Rob Palfreyman. Picture: Contributed

Tencent has also secured a license to use sensewhere indoor positioning software as part of its Tencent Map Location SDK that is available to numerous users across Tencent mobile platforms and affiliated companies. The investment will help the firm develop potential partnerships in China’s mobile internet space, deliver its mobile advertising service, fuel expansion of the company and its indoor location solutions. As part of the arrangements, sensewhere will be Tencent’s preferred vendor for location based advertising services in China.

Sensewhere’s CEO, Rob Palfreyman, said: “This investment by Tencent will be significant for the company and is an endorsement of our technology, strategy and ability to deliver low-cost, highly scalable and highly accurate Universal indoor positioning.”

He went on: “I am thrilled with the collaboration, and having Tencent as a strategic investor will help take sensewhere to the next level and assist us growing our customer base, building new Location Based Services and investing further in R&D.”

Sensewhere’s Chairman, Jim Devine, added: “The investment by Tencent highlights the advantage of sensewhere’s indoor positioning technology over other solutions and further cements our position as a leading Indoor Positioning System (IPS) provider. The planned roll out of multiple services to millions of users across China and contiguous territories which incorporate senewhere’s enabling technology represents a major step forward towards our goal of providing a truly global solution for indoor positioning.”

Julian Ma, corporate vice president of Tencent’s mobile internet division, said: “We believe that a superior, universal indoor positioning technology will deeply influence how people interact with each other, and significantly change how companies communicate with consumers and conduct commerce indoor across online and offline platforms. sensewhere’s unique, highly scalable approach will greatly enhance Tencent Map’s indoor positioning capabilities and enable our users to navigate indoor in a much more accurate and convenient manner.”