The investment round will support Route Konnect’s growth ambitions by doubling the team with key technical and business operations hires, in order to bring the platform to market
A £780,000 pre-seed equity investment in Cardiff AI software company Route Konnect is set to revolutionise the way the world understands people and vehicle movement, abolishing the need for controversial facial recognition technology, in a deal advised on by the GS Verde Group.
Led by the Development Bank of Wales, the investment round will support Route Konnect’s growth ambitions by doubling the team with key technical and business operations hires, in order to bring the platform to market.
Described as the ‘Google Analytics’ of physical spaces, Route Konnect is the first video analytics company to anonymously capture connected, multi-camera, vehicle and people movement insights across any defined space, town or city.
Highly accurate, real-time data provides a true understanding of the end-to-end journey, enabling more efficient traffic management, place-making and urban planning for smart cities and the management of places.
Based in the Tramshed, the company has been set-up by Chief Executive Mohamed Binesmael, software engineer Matteo De Rosa and Chief Technology Officer Daniel Harborne, a software engineer who previously worked for Amazon.
The founders met when studying at Cardiff University in 2016 and have now secured their first pre-seed equity investment led by the Development Bank of Wales’ Technology Seed Fund with additional investment from proptech VC Pi Labs, early-stage investors SFC Capital and private angel investors with the backing of Plug and Play, who were early investors in Dropbox and PayPal.
Co-founder and managing director Mohamed Binesmael said: Our platform captures accurate, intelligent, real-time insights into the movement of people and vehicles – without infringing on individual privacy – to enable better, more efficient traffic management, place-making and urban planning across towns and cities globally.
From reducing wait times at traffic lights and easing congestion for emergency services access, to improving customer experiences at stadiums and retail outlets, the application of accurate and anonymous movement insights has universal potential, he said.
We are thrilled to secure the backing of this incredible line-up of investors, enabling us to double the size of our team with new technical and operational hires, including machine learning and video analytics specialists, he said.
He said: With so much research and development already under our belts, we’re ready to accelerate on our ambitions to change the way the world understands people and vehicle behaviour and use intelligent data to save time, resources and reduce impact on the planet.
Matthew Wilde of the Development Bank of Wales tech ventures team said: Route Konnect has built upon recently published techniques to innovate away the need for facial recognition for multi-camera movement analytics. This capability unlocks powerful insights about the movement across an entire location, without infringing on privacy.