KitLocate is a

startup company A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

headquartered in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, delivering location-based technology solutions for

smartphones A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as mult ...

. Focused on geo-tracking and mobile search results dependent on location, KitLocate's platform delivers low-power

geolocation Geopositioning is the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object or a person. Geopositioning yields a set of Geographic coordinate system, geographic coordinates (such as latitude and longitude) in a given map datum ...

technology for mobile devices.

History

KitLocate was founded in 2011 by Omri Moran, Yoav Cafri and Ron Miller. In November 2012, the founders joined the 7th wave of ‘The Junction’, the collaborative startups accelerator program, backed by

Genesis Partners Genesis Partners is an Israeli venture capital firm, founded in 1996 by Eddy Shalev and Eyal Kishon. Overview Genesis Partners investment strategy is focused on early-stage Israeli innovation-driven technology companies. The company invests in ...

; they then launched a pilot product for Pango and procured their first customer:

Isracard Isracard () is an Israeli company that is made up of four different companies: Isracard LTD, Europay LTD, Aminit LTD and American Express Israel, which offers financial services – including credit card issuing, loans, credit solutions, and ...

. After working with The Junction, KitLocate joined a four-month accelerator program:

Microsoft Ventures Accelerator Program M12, formerly Microsoft Ventures, is a corporate venture capital subsidiary of Microsoft. Founded in March 2016, its mission is to be an active, strategic partner during a startup's growth, typically investing between Series A and D. The fund is ...

in Herzlyia and as a direct result, were acquired by

Yandex Yandex LLC ( rus, Яндекс, r=Yandeks, p=ˈjandəks) is a Russian technology company that provides Internet-related products and services including a web browser, search engine, cloud computing, web mapping, online food ordering, streaming ...

(YNDX:

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

) on March 18, 2014. KitLocate team members joined the Yandex mobile search team located at KitLocate's offices, which is earmarked to become the new Yandex R&D facility in ‘

Silicon Wadi Silicon Wadi (, ) is a region in Israel that serves as one of the global centres for High tech, advanced technology. It spans the Israeli coastal plain, and is cited as among the reasons why, for some, the country has become known as the world ...

’ in

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

. Omri Moran performs the role of GM for Yandex Israel R&D.

Awards and recognition

In 2012, KitLocate won the first ever Israel Advanced Technology Industries and MasterCard Israel Technology Award.{{Cite web, url = http://www.haaretz.com/business/start-up-kitlocate-wins-technology-award-1.491383, title = Start-up KitLocate wins technology award, date = January 2, 2013, accessdate = , website = Ha'aretz, publisher = , last = Orpaz, first = Inbal With prize money of $25,000, KitLocate was accepted into ‘The Junction' Acceleration program.

References

2011 establishments in Israel Software companies of Israel