Sunstone leads $2m round for Kontakt.io

The investment was made through the Sunstone Capital Technology Ventures III fund, a $112m tech fund raised in December 2011, which made its first investment in 2012.

Max Niederhofer, partner at Sunstone Capital, told unquote" Kontakt currently lacks working capital, so the investment will be used to hire more staff in sales, marketing and product management, as well as to support product rollout and development.

Though the business currently has plans for some hardware products, Kontakt will primarily focus on its management suite and software development kit for Beacon – a micro-location transmitter and receiver.

Kontakt has ambitions to become a network of networks, providing infrastructure and management of local Beacon networks and larger networks such as Groupon or Facebook that are interested in using the Beacon data.

Kontakt expects to make its first large-scale deployment by the end of the year, with somewhere between a few thousand to tens of thousands of units deployed. By the end of 2015-2016, Niederhofer expects Kontakt to have achieved critical mass in 3-4 major cities.

The GP had looked at a similar firm, Estimote, at the seed round and decided not to proceed with investment as it was too far away from product deployment in Sunstone's view.

After re-evaluating the sector using Mattermark, a private company information tracker, Sunstone found Kontakt, which it considered to be further ahead of other companies.

The ambitions of the Kontakt founders and management, which include fast international expansion, were said to be a key factor in the deal.

Previous funding
Kontakt received $250,000 in seed funding in September 2013.

Company
The company provides services for Beacon, a location transmitter for small locations. Kontakt offers a Beacon platform, including the supply and customisation of Beacon hardware, with an open API and software development kits for iOS and Android.

Kontakt was founded in Krakow, Poland, in April 2013 and currently employs 35 people.

People
Partner Max Niederhofer worked on the deal for Sunstone, with Kontakt founders Tomasz Kozminski, Tomasz Kolek, Rafal Janicki and Szymon Niemczura.

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