If you want to get your product to a grocery store in Mexico City, Dataplor has global location intelligence to help you do that.
Founder and CEO Geoffrey Michener launched the company in 2016 to index micro businesses in emerging markets. The company raised $2 million in 2019 to bring online food delivery vendors from Latin America.
Dataplor uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, large language models, and a purpose-built technology platform to capture public domain data.
While this isn’t entirely unique—there are companies like ThoughtSpot, Esri, and Near doing something similar around business intelligence and location intelligence—Dataplor’s “secret sauce” combines all that technology and public data domain with a human factor. The company recruits and trains over 100,000 human validators, called Explorers, to validate all data by computer. In addition, no personally identifiable information is used.
What results are the answers to questions like “How many Taco Bell locations opened last year in South America?” or “What percentage of Walmarts in Europe are near a fast food restaurant?”
Since then, the company has collected more than 300 million points-of-interest (POI) records on more than 15,000 brands — data such as physical location, hours, contact information, whether they accept credit cards and consumer sentiment — in more than 200 countries. and areas.
Dataplor then licenses this data to companies in a wide variety of industries, including third-party logistics, real estate and finance, such as American Express, Zettle and PayPal. More than 35 Fortune 500 brands already use Dataplor.
Dataplor’s location intelligence tool that displays nearby rates. Image Credits: Dataplor
“Companies’ 10-Ks are always six months late, so it’s hard to know if a company, say, Starbucks, what their opening or closing rates are,” Michener told TechCrunch. “Other companies also want to know if one of their competitors has closed or what other businesses are around [are] so they can see if they can put a location there. We’re trying to empower decision-making.”
The company has also grown revenue by an average of 2.5 times annually since 2020 and is on track for profitability this year, Michener said.
Now the company wants to grow even faster, so Dataplor raised $10.6 million in Series A funding led by Spark Capital. Spark is known for early investments in Slack, Affirm, Postmates, Discord and Deel. The round also includes participation from Quest Venture Partners, Acronym Venture Capital, Circadian Ventures, Two Lanterns Venture Partners and APA Venture Partners. In total, the company has raised $20.3 million.
Dataplor plans to use the funding to make strategic hires and accelerate its sales and brand presence, Michener said.
For the Series A, Spark and Alex Finkelstein, the general partner who led the deal, “had a lot of conviction in what Dataplor was doing,” which is why Michener chose them to lead, he said. As part of the investment, Finkelstein joins Dataplor’s board of directors, which includes John Frankel, founding partner of ffVC.
“Alex saw the bigger picture and saw that while we’re not just a POI or location data company, we help people get somewhere or sell a product,” Michener said. “He said that knowing everything about a business and then in 100 million places, “it’s a really big opportunity. Nobody has done this before.’ It really resonated, and if we share the same vision, we can use the capital to grow and grow effectively and efficiently, why not? Let’s go do it.”
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