Mapping startup nabs $7m in series A funding

Their first product is Nextbillionmaps, a platform offering routing and direction services.

Mapping tech startup NextBillion.ai clinched $7m in a series A investment co-led by American venture capital (VC) firms Lightspeed Venture Partners and Falcon Edge Capital, a press release revealed.

Co-founded earlier this year by former tech-leadership members of Grab, Gaurav Bubna, Ajay Bulusu, and Shaolin Zheng had developed Grab Maps, along with their routing, pricing and estimated time of arrival (ETA) features amongst others. Furthermore, they added that the startup’s team consists of software engineers formerly from top-tier Chinese giants, such as Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance.

Already experiencing rapid growth in Singapore, China and India, NextBillion.ai aims to build intuitive and intelligent AI-led solutions customised to each business, and they will utilise the capital to grow its team, product and R&D in future focus areas.

Further, they aim to tap into emerging markets across Southeast Asia, Middle East, North Africa and India.

Currently, Nextbillionmaps is the first product of NextBillion.ai, which is an AI-first maps SaaS platform that provides enterprises with a range of application programming interfaces (API), such as routing, navigation, direction and distance matrix. They will provide highly specialised AI tooling capabilities that support map data curation and maintenance.

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