If you want to get your product in a grocery store in Mexico City, Dataplor has global location intelligence to help you do that.
Founder and CEO Geoffrey Michener started the company in 2016 to index micro-businesses in emerging markets. The company raised $2 million in 2019 to bring Latin American food delivery vendors online.
Dataplor uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, large language models and a purpose-built technology platform to take in public domain data.
While that is not totally unique — there are companies like ThoughtSpot, Esri and Near doing something similar around business and location intelligence — Dataplor’s “secret sauce” is combining all of that technology and public domain data with a human factor. The company recruits and trains over 100,000 human validators, called Explorers, to validate all the data via computer. In addition, no personally identifiable information is used.
What results is answers to questions like “How many Taco Bell locations were opened across South America last year?” or “What percentage of Walmarts in Europe are located near a fast food restaurant?”
Dataplor raises $2M to digitize small businesses in Latin America
The company has since amassed more than 300 million point of interest (POI) records on over 15,000 brands — data like physical location, hours, contact information, whether they accept credit cards and consumer sentiment — in over 200 countries and territories.
Dataplor then licenses that data to companies in a wide variety of industries, including third-party logistics, real estate and finance, like American Express, Zettle and PayPal. More than 35 Fortune 500 brands already use Dataplor.
“Company 10-Ks are always six months late, so it’s hard to know if a company, for example, Starbucks, what their open or close rates are,” Michener told TechCrunch. “Other companies also want to know if one of their competitors closed or what the other businesses around there [are] so they can see if they can put a location there. We are trying to empower their decision-making.”
The company has also grown revenue by an average of 2.5x year-over-year 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 intends 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 into what Dataplor was doing,” which was 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 he saw that while we’re not just a POI or places data company, we are helping people get somewhere or sell a product,” Michener said. “He said that by knowing everything about a business, and then across 100 million places, ‘That’s a really big opportunity. No one’s done that before.’ It really resonated, and if we share that same vision, we can use capital to grow and to grow efficiently and effectively, why not? Let’s go do it.”
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