(February, 17th 2016) Over the last three years, Kontakt.io, a Bluetooth Low Energy beacon provider, has become a sustainable business that hires over 60 employees in seven countries, grows 300% YoY, and that has generated millions of dollars of revenue in 2015 alone. Having closed their second funding led by Credo Ventures, the firm plans to focus on further product development and global expansion.
Kontakt.io claims not to be another unicorn raising millions of dollars to multiply KPIs such as traction, a number of users, or monthly signups. They emphasize the importance of developing products that answer the market’s needs to help both individual projects and the entire industry scale up.
“It is relatively easy to gather some enthusiasts around your product but that does not make your business sustainable yet. Our customers are looking for solutions that are enterprise-ready and that they can use as a foundation to build their own profitable businesses. We have been building such an environment for the last three years, and this new investment will help us make it even more reliable and scalable,” says Szymon Niemczura, CEO at Kontakt.io.
Apart from further developing its award-winning technology, the company plans to use the investment to enrich and diversify its hardware and software product lineup. Niemczura reveals that they will release two new types of hardware this year, and that both of them “are going to challenge the existing expectations towards beacon technology.” Moreover, Kontakt.io is working on new services, including business model integrations, OEM offerings, embedded engineering, and global support for its customers.
“We are expecting to see new players entering the beacon industry. The ecosystem that we are building will answer needs that proximity could not have answered before. It will inspire new markets and bring pioneering use cases. While this may sound like a revolution, our main goal is still to remain a sustainable company and a trustworthy partner for the 15,000 customers we already have as well as for the incoming ones. And we are are happy to have another investor who supports our mission,” says Niemczura.
Previously backed by Sunstone Capital, Kontakt.io has now a new partner–Credo Ventures, an Prague-based VC firm.
“Kontakt.io’s leadership team has proven itself to be very competent. Their remarkable growth, innovation, and the adoption of their tech in many industries show that Kontakt.io is at the forefront of proximity, pushing it towards the enterprise level. We are excited to join them as they continue to scale and unlock new business opportunities,” says Jan Habermann, Partner at Credo Ventures.
In order to realize all these plans, Kontakt.io is actively growing its personnel worldwide. They are hiring in their existing offices in Krakow, New York, Shenzen, and Guadalajara as well as in a new one in Berlin that will exclusively focus on growth and business development.