nextbillion funding: NextBillion.ai raises $21 million in fresh funding led by Mirae Asset Capital

Existing investors, US-based Lightspeed Venture Partners, Microsoft’s Venture Fund M12 and Alpha Wave Global also participated in the round.

With this latest round of funding the company plans to expand its market share in building and managing decentralized geospatial technology stacks for enterprises. It plans to expand into North America and Europe.

Founded in March 2020 by Ajay Bulusu, Gaurav Bubna and Shaolin Zheng. NextBillion.ai helps enterprises to build, scale and manage their own spatial data ecosystems. The company claims to have seen four times year-on-year growth in revenue and 10 times growth in customer base.

“Given the current funding market environment, this round shows how strong the demand for our software is and how truly differentiated we are…We will use this funding to expand our global footprint and help our enterprise customers unlock value using spatial data,” said Bulusu.

The AI-based company’s customers include Gojek, Coca-Cola, Glassdoor and Zuscoffee.

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The Singapore-based company raised close to $7 million as a part of its Series A funding in June 2020 from Lightspeed and Falcon Edge Capital. The startup then raised $6.25 million as a part of its extended Series A funding round from Microsoft’s venture fund, M12 in May 2021, taking the total funding since inception in 2020 to $34 million.

“We are trying to disrupt the way an established business consumes and manages spatial data, and the way we think about this problem is fundamentally new and different,” added Bulusu.

Apart from the existing customers, the company has also partnered with enterprises in the ride-hailing, food delivery, big tech and logistics industries.

The company competes in parts with Google Maps and Mapbox.

“NextBillion.ai’s decentralized mapping platform provides enterprises with the blocks to build, scale and manage their mapping infrastructure, giving rise to customized solutions that solve multiple use cases,” said Ashish Dave, CEO at Mirae Asset Venture Investments.