DeCarta raises another $20M for its location-based platform
DeCarta, the creator of a popular platform for managing location-based (LBS) data, has raised $20 million in additional funding. That includes financing from the Hotung Group and TransLink Capital, as well as existing investor Norwest Venture Partners and a previously announced $6 million from the T-Mobile Venture Fund.
The location-based market still looks like it’s heating up — for example, location-based social application companies like Loopt and Whrrl have been getting a lot of attention, especially with the release of the iPhone 3G with GPS support. Loopt even won the best application award at our MobileBeat 2008 conference last week. But at the same conference, Rich Wong of Accel Partners noted that it’s an extremely competitive market, and “there are a lot of bodies on the beach.”
DeCarta benefits from the excitement without competing with the application companies directly. Instead, it provides the layer between the geospatial data provided by companies like NAVTEQ and applications created by customers like Loopt and real estate search startup Zillow. The platform takes the raw data and translates it into something that’s easily searchable. The company also has deals with carriers including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. Chief executive J. Kim Fennell told me DeCarta’s biggest competition will probably come from companies like Apple and Nokia, who are rumored to be developing LBS platforms of their own.
The latest funding comes quite close to the $21 million goal that we previously reported, and brings deCarta’s total third round financing to $35 million.
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About the Author, Anthony Ha
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.