As consumers and businesses are demanding faster and easier ways to get their work done, many startups are building technology to make this happen. One such company from Switzerland – Scandit is building the necessary tech that will use AI and the smartphone camera.
Becomes a unicorn!
Now, Scandit, which operates in the smart data capture sector has closed its Series D funding round of $150 million, which has valued it at $1 billion, thereby becoming a unicorn. This financing round was led by Warburg Pincus, a global growth investor that has invested in high-growth companies, especially in B2B software.
The oversubscribed funding round also saw the participation from existing shareholders, including Forestay Capital, Atomico, GV, G2VP, Kreos, Schneider Electric, Swisscom Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, and NGP Capital. With this round, the overall funds raised by Scandit accounts to $300 million.
Sony Innovation Fund by IGV recently also participated in the funding round of Superpedestrian: the MIT spin-off which raised $125M to become ‘Volvo of e-Scooters.’
Funds utilisation
It will use the investment to fuel its global expansion with a focus on APAC, including Singapore, Japan, and South Korea. Previously, the company grew its team by 85% and now it plans to grow it further by another 50% this year. The investment will also be used to continue to drive expansion and innovation in core verticals.
It will accelerate the R&D to advance enterprises’ core business processes with an increased emphasis on AI/ML capabilities and autonomous data capture methods. Scandit Smart Data Capture platform will further augment the intelligence and decision-making of users leading to faster, more accurate and automated outcomes whether on a smartphone, wearables or via robots.
Scandit will enable smart devices to capture data from barcodes, IDs, text, and objects via computer vision to automate processes and provide insights that improve customer engagement and worker productivity.
Samuel Mueller, CEO at Scandit, said, “The new funding will allow us to help more businesses globally and to better empower an evolving mobile workforce, meet new customer expectations and deliver increasingly automated operations. We are thrilled to have Warburg Pincus as our partner on the next phase of our growth journey. They bring a deep understanding of our business and software growth investing and a long track record of backing winning businesses.”
ShelfView: All you need to know!
Recently, the Swiss unicorn launched ShelfView, smart data capture and analytics solution for retail shelf management. Leveraging augmented reality, object recognition, optical character recognition and other innovative computer vision technology, ShelfView captures SKU-level product data via both mobile devices and autonomous robots to enable constant shelf visibility and empower more intelligent and efficient store operations.
Proves better than traditional systems
During the pandemic, Scandit has also been providing data capture services to national health organisations such as the NHS in the UK to support Covid-19 programs and initiatives. In this situation, customers sought after contactless experiences while businesses want to automate processes, gain new intelligence and increase efficiencies to meet these new needs.
While traditional data capture tools, such as the general purpose scanners have been unable to meet such requirements, the Scandit Smart Data Capture enables enterprises to address these new challenges with unmatched speed, accuracy and intelligence.
Flavio Porciani, Managing Director at Warburg Pincus, said, ‘’Scandit’s smart data capture technology is transforming the way businesses operate and interact with their customers in an increasingly digital world and is strongly aligned with some of the biggest secular trends of our time, including enablement of the digital workforce and supply chain visibility.’’
Founded in 2009 by Christian Floerkemeier, Christof Roduner, and Samuel Mueller. The three researchers from MIT, ETH Zurich and IBM Research and remain in the business even today.
