Location & Point Service, Smapo Raises 150M Yen / TechCrunch Japan

Smapo is a smartphone application which allows users to get loyalty point for shopping and others by checking in real shops. The operator of the service, Spotlight announced to raise 150 million yen from Itochu Technology Ventures. It is the first fundraise from outside investors for Spotlight which was founded in September 2011. ...

What makes the service unique is the way to identify location of shops to check-in. Many of check-in services like foursquare use GPS, however it is not accurate and difficult to identify shops in the same building. Smapo lets shops place devices emitting ultrasonic waves people cannot hear. Smapo application picks up the ultrasonic waves to identify which shops the user is at. In addition, with the ultrasonic, it enables to change radius from a certain floor to whole floors of a department store. ...

TechCrunch Japan 5/8/2012 [jp]

memo

• Smapo charges shops based on number of users who check-in the shops.
• A founder of Spotlight, Mr. Shibata has sold out his previous startup, Shoppi, to IMJ, web marketing agency in 2011.
• http://smapo.jp/