Bytelight's LED-based positioning platform attracts $3M in funding

Indoor positioning based upon LED visible light spectrum gained a vote of confidence as ByteLight closed a $3 million Series A round of funding contributed by institutional and individual investors.

Putting up the funding were the likes of Flywheel Ventures, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, the eCoast Angel Network, Sand Hill Angels and  Don Dodge, who is developer advocate at Google (NASDAQ:GOOG). Boston-based Bytelight said it will use the cash for platform development and to accelerate its growth in the retail sector.

VantagePoint Capital Partners led Bytelight's $1.25 million seed round a little more than a year ago when the vendor emerged from stealth mode.

ByteLight's patented solution turns LED light sources into positioning beacons, which transmit proprietary signals for receipt by camera-equipped mobile devices. Once signals are detected by a device, it then calculates its position without the need for an active network connection. ByteLight claims its indoor-positioning solution is accurate to less than 1 meter and takes less than 1 second to compute.

ByteLight - Indoor Location Using LED Lighting from ByteLight on Vimeo.

"Sub-meter accuracy has long been the holy-grail for retailers experimenting with indoor location," said Dan Ryan, co-founder and CEO of ByteLight.

ByteLight is already piloting its platform with global retailers, including three of the top 10. Retailers can use the platform to deliver mobile coupons and redemptions to in-store customers, with offers tailored to each customer's location and shopping history.

ByteLight's platform combines two hot technology trends--indoor positioning and light-based communications.

ABI Research recently predicted the indoor location market will reach $4 billion in 2018. However, research firm MarketsandMarkets is more sanguine about the growth in indoor location services, predicting that it will reach only $2.8 billion in 2018, up from around $450 million this year.

Meanwhile, the idea of using visible light communication technology to deliver wireless data is gaining supporters. Backers of the approach contend that using the vast amounts of readily available free and unlicensed visible light as well as infrared spectrum could not only solve issues of limited and congested RF spectrum but also deliver much faster wireless speeds.

For more:
- see this Bytelight release
- see this VentureBeat article

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