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139. Bull, Bear & Beyond – Waymap executive interview
5 Plays2 months ago
In this interview, Tom Pey (chairman and founder) and Celso Zuccollo (CEO) of Waymap, a privately held company, discuss their revolutionary indoor navigation platform. Originally developed with a $1m Google.org grant to assist visually impaired users, Waymap has evolved into a comprehensive platform operating across more than 11 cities and serving over 140 venues, including Washington Metro (over 100 stations and 11,000 bus stops), LA Metro and Lord’s Cricket Ground. Waymap’s proprietary Smart Step algorithm uses the four sensors built into smartphones to achieve one-meter accuracy and 10-degree heading accuracy without requiring external infrastructure or signals. The technology works seamlessly indoors, outdoors and deep underground.
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About ‘Bull, Bear & Beyond’
Bull, Bear & Beyond': features candid conversations with senior executives and from our own team of experts from across industries, exploring strategy, innovation, and the opportunities shaping their markets and 60-second pieces are a compressed summary of content designed to convey our message in a single, easily shareable hit.
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Original interview published on 03/11/2025 and reposted as a podcast
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Transcript
Meet the Founders
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Edison TV. Today I'm joined by Tom Pei and Celso Tsukolo, founder and chief executive officer, respectively, of Waymap. Waymap is a privately held business which offers an app for very high accuracy location, both indoors and outdoors.
Expanding Beyond Accessibility
00:00:23
Speaker
The company was founded and started providing um the service for visually impaired people, but it has now broadened its scope to um to offer solutions for a wide range of venues.
00:00:36
Speaker
Venues include the Washington Metro, the l LA Metro and Lord's Cricket Ground, for example. Tom, many thanks for joining me today. Thank you.
Google Grant and App Refinement
00:00:46
Speaker
And can you start by introducing us to to to Waymap? Can you talk about how you came across the idea and how how the how how the company was started off? Apply to Google.org, got a million dollar grant and we were asked to go out and change the world and we did. So we went around and we talked to thousands of disabled people around the world and from that came the modern idea of Waymap.
Infrastructure-Free Innovation
00:01:09
Speaker
So what we found was that there was no technology out there that was accurate enough not just to guide blind people who are the super hot case here but um also people who didn't have any visual problem and the second thing was that any any technology that was out there had to have infrastructure and that was a real barrier to entry because you had hang bluetooth beacons up to all sorts of so um I came up with the idea what we wanted was an app that works on a mobile phone that worked indoors and outdoors that it ah operated to up to one meter accuracy and 10 degree heading accuracy.
00:01:50
Speaker
And the hard bit actually of all of this was that um it had to have no, ah it it had to operate if there was no signal. So in other words, if your mobile phone provider lost you, we
First Trial Success
00:02:03
Speaker
didn't. um And so was born Waymap.
00:02:06
Speaker
And um and we we did our first trial in LA about five, six years ago. um And hey, it worked.
00:02:17
Speaker
and And we've been growing ever since. Chester, many thanks for joining me today. Can you start by discussing and describing how the technology works? What is unique about the technology platform that you operate?
00:02:30
Speaker
So Dan, thank you very much for having myself and Tom today. and Diving into the technology, as Tom alluded to what we realized we needed to build was something that was truly signal free for the user and indeed worked without any infrastructure for the built environment.
00:02:46
Speaker
So what we do, which is proprietary and unique to Waymap, is we use the four sensors that are built into your everyday smartphones in both ah Android and iOS today.
00:02:57
Speaker
And we take the raw information from those and pass them through a suite of algorithms we call SmartStep, which works out um at a very high level, two things, step length and step direction.
00:03:10
Speaker
And what that means is Without any external signals, we can follow people as they move through any part of the built environments, outdoor, indoor, or indeed even deep underground as they
SmartStep Technology
00:03:23
Speaker
move around using just what's built into the smartphone. And that is truly unique, proprietary and As you know, we're using that for indoor navigation today, but there's a whole bunch of different features and services we are looking to build in the future off of what really is, you know, the infrastructure layer.
00:03:39
Speaker
I see it yeah kind of like GPS has done outdoor for the indoor world. And what was the moment where um where people realized that this wasn't just an app for the visually impaired, that you could actually use this for indoor navigation for, you know,
First Major Client: Washington Metro
00:03:54
Speaker
for everyone? Well, I knew that the technology was going to cost so much money that um if you wanted to get people to invest in it, there had to be they had to have a commercial and angle to it. It couldn't be just another tool for disabled people.
00:04:09
Speaker
Right. um And so um what we did was... it I figured out that actually, you know, people want to navigate and in in cities not because they just want to navigate.
00:04:24
Speaker
They want to go from their home to the cheese counter in the supermarket. They couldn't do that. They wanted to go from the from their office to the seat in the theatre. They couldn't do that.
00:04:35
Speaker
Great. And who was your first um who was your first client and and yeah who was the first person to realize the potential of this and deploy this? We went to um Los Angeles, which is a great city for creativity and it allows you to think big. And they've been a longtime supporter and they've helped us to develop ever since.
00:04:56
Speaker
But the real people that grabbed it was were marked the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. um um And they just thought you know their ambition was to be the best and ah metro system in the United States. They've just won it, by the way. and And we were part of their success story. And um yeah and they grabbed it and it's now out across a hundred over 100 stations and 11,000
Reducing Costs and Emissions
00:05:25
Speaker
bus stops. the the The other thing that we were able to prove working with WMATA was that this just isn't a nice to have.
00:05:34
Speaker
This actually saves money. but So, for instance, in in Washington, they sell they spend about 12% of their annual budget providing specialist specialist transport for disabled people called paratransit.
00:05:51
Speaker
And that is about $120 million a year.
00:05:57
Speaker
We believe that, ah and and it's starting to happen, that um about 10% of disabled people would actually prefer to use fixed route transit.
00:06:08
Speaker
And that means that there's a potential saving. And if they and can take that number of people off paratransit and get an increase of 1%, just 1% in their ridership, because this improves the convenience, then the CO2 emissions in um in Washington is about 240,000 of c o two a year saved.
00:06:31
Speaker
So hey, in it not only does this help disabled people to get around, but it is a real winner as well commercially and economically.
Targeting Diverse Sectors
00:06:43
Speaker
Get you. And and turning turn to more the commercial side, um you've so you've secured some quite of high profile um clients in Washington Metro, LA Metro, Lord's Cricket Ground.
00:06:54
Speaker
um And now you're targeting other sectors. Can you can you talk about the the vertical markets for your solution and and which ones you're targeting on? Yeah, a good question, Dan. So we grew up in transport, which is a difficult vertical to grow up in, and but it's a created a great set of calling cards for us working with organizations like the Washington DC Metro, the Los Angeles Metro, and indeed and a few Metro operators out in Asia means that we've got real credibility as an organization right now, but our technology extends far beyond just rail.
00:07:25
Speaker
So we have some clients coming up in the retail environments in the UK and beyond, in hospitals. We've got a first sports stadium, as you've talked about, with Lords Cricket Ground, looking to expand that into football, which i think is a really interesting environment for our technology.
00:07:39
Speaker
But inherently, any venue that is large scale and has a number of people who are unfamiliar with the space is a great target for our technology. So we're in 140 plus venues today across 11 plus cities, but we're looking to be in thousands, tens of thousands in the future.
00:07:55
Speaker
Interesting.
Business Model and Market Potential
00:07:56
Speaker
So how big have you sized your adjustable market? How big do you see your adjustable market as being? Yeah, so according to the yeah a lot of the literature out there, the market is around 40, 50 billion US per annum.
00:08:09
Speaker
But what we've done, because our technology and approach is fundamentally new, we've actually done a bottom-up market sizing and we've built that around Washington DC which is our flagship city where we've calculated the total number of venues that there are in the city where our technology makes sense and you're looking at large-scale venue-wise over 1200 buildings in that city alone but once you start to include some of the smaller venues which we think are you know like reasonably sized malls etc you're looking at over 5,000 buildings. So you extrapolate 5,000 potential customers in one city across the whole world, and we think the market's actually a lot better a lot bigger.
00:08:50
Speaker
Very interesting. And so what is your operational model, your business model? When you engage with a new customer, can you talk about the implementation cycle and also ah you know how they pay you? Is it is it it a recurring revenue? Is it what one-off?
00:09:05
Speaker
Peace out. Our business model is relatively simple. We charge two fees, an upfront fee to come in and create the digital maps that we need. So when we engage the new customer, we work with partners around the world who go in and capture LiDAR information. So we create essentially a 3D digital model of their venue. that's useful beyond just navigation purposes. It's useful for fire safety, asset audits, etc. and And there's a lot of legislation globally, actually, that is proving a tailwind for us, like Martin's Law, for example, that's coming up in the UK, that is mandating extra safety requirements for public venues. So basically, at a high level, a lot of venues are having the themselves scanned for other purposes, which is a tailwind for us. And thereafter, it's a license fee, recurring revenues. and And look, that's really where we want to play, to be a true software platform
00:09:53
Speaker
for indoor navigation, but also indoor location-based products, services, features, etc. Interesting. but Can you talk about your channels to market? Is it direct sales? do you work through
Commercial Expansion Plans
00:10:03
Speaker
partners? so yeah how do you How do you go to market?
00:10:05
Speaker
So at the moment, we are direct selling and we have a few partners around the world. and We also have a very unique offering, which means that Our order book and kind of inbound portfolio has never required us to build a major sales team.
00:10:22
Speaker
ah We are at the moment in fundraising mode because we realize that the scale of the opportunity is very big and we're looking to build build out that commercial team. But being unique as ah as a product offering, we've been quite fortunate to have really inbound interest from all over the world.
00:10:39
Speaker
Right, and in in terms of the future milestones of the business, can you talk about can can you talk about those both from a technical standpoint and a commercial
Enhancing User Experience and New Applications
00:10:47
Speaker
standpoint? What what what should people be looking for to track your progress over the next 12 months, 24 months and so on?
00:10:53
Speaker
So we are looking from a commercial standpoint not to just build breadth in terms of our client base, but also depth. And what I mean by that is in a city like London, for example,
00:11:05
Speaker
the more venues we have signed up to Waymap, the more powerful the user experience becomes to you who might download our application and use it across rail, retail, sports stadia, et cetera. So that depth part is is really important.
00:11:19
Speaker
And as more people obviously onboard to the application, it becomes more valuable to venues. So there's a network effect there that we are looking to to and push. And that obviously is is more the commercial side of things. On the technical side of things, today we are very much about navigation.
00:11:35
Speaker
We also are very much about accessibility-led navigation. So we're looking to build in more features to to make our product more usable for individuals that have specific requirements beyond yeah the mass market use case. So people with early onset Alzheimer's, dementia, ah whatever it might be, we want to have truly a universal product that works for everybody. And going beyond navigation,
00:11:58
Speaker
There's really exciting things you can do in the space of fire safety, emergency evacuation, first responder services, because we have a high quality map of the venue.
00:12:09
Speaker
We have a really accurate location algorithm and and a lot of the other features are quite interesting. are relatively easier to build once you have that information. That's interesting.
Seeking Investment for Growth
00:12:17
Speaker
So lots of different ah ways to take the technology within your existing client base.
00:12:21
Speaker
Can you talk about the fund raise? How much are you planning to raise? And can you talk about the the deployment of capital? what What are you looking to to deploy the capital into? Yeah, good question. So at the moment we are raising two and a half million pounds, which is a bridge to our series a series A slash B, depending on obviously where the metrics fall. And what we are looking to do, as I alluded to earlier, is really build up the commercial team within Waymap.
00:12:49
Speaker
We're an engineering heavy house because the technology is fundamentally complicated. And over the first four to five years of our journey, we've really been focused on technology. But now we want to build the team that can yeah attack the market opportunity that has presented itself, not just over the last 12 months, but yeah we we always have known is there.
00:13:09
Speaker
Chelsea, fascinating story. Many thanks for joining me today.