The quest to spot something, or to find optimum solutions for lingering problems, leads to an astonishing trail of discovery and awakening. Necessity is often called the mother of invention. But when necessity combines with a personal pursuit, it ignites the spark of innovation.
“During my student days, I was searching for an apartment in close vicinity to the university. Since there was no suitable application that would help me, I programmed one myself. That application eventually led to a location startup in 2013”, says Henning Hollburg, Founder & Managing Director, Targomo.
Pinpointed precision
Targomo is a German location intelligence startup that offers customized solutions for different sectors. Recently it joined hands with McDonalds in Germany. The partnership enables the fast-food giant to tap into location intelligence for business expansion and assess the viability of potential sites.
“The deal with McDonalds was preceded by a pilot that lasted several months. During this time, we created analyses and McDonalds tested our TargomoLOOP platform for their location planning. McDonalds is certainly our best-known global client, but our platform also helps fast-growing quick commerce companies to find the right location for their hubs and drive expansion”, says Hollburg.
Targomo analytics platform solves strategic problems for any businesses with physical location networks — be it food & beverages, miscellaneous retailers or sport studios.
Targomo’s first product was a portfolio of API services for spatial analytics: isochrone polygons, routing, points of interests and additional APIs for location analytics and mapping visualizations.
“Our second and current product is TargomoLOOP, a platform for site selection and location planning. It helps brands with physical touchpoints to build ideal location networks and select the best location for their needs”.
Location salience & convergence
Over the years, the significance of location has grown exponentially. More and more companies are today recognizing its value in analytics, decision-making, and staying ahead of competitors. With the pandemic disruption, there’s a new dimension to its ever-increasing utility.
“As the pandemic continues to limit our mobility, location technology capabilities offer new insights into strategic, tactical and operational decisions. The question “Where are my target audiences?” is mentioned in the same breath as “Who are my target audiences?” and “What are their preferences?”, adds Hollburg.
“There will be customized technology solutions for many more specific problems that are easy to use without specialized GIS knowledge. We are already seeing location-tech start-ups rising to become unicorns”.
Becoming future-ready
In the coming years, 5G will turbocharge location intelligence as it vastly enhances both speed and accuracy of data transfer. This would make mobility analysis even faster and precise.
“Location intelligence is key to building mobility infrastructure of the future as it enables effective planning, be it for electric vehicle charging or hydrogen supply. It also helps to plan better and build supply in areas affected by demographic change”.
Pandemic has been a great disruption that not only exposed multiple underlying fault-lines, but called for a reorientation of a lot of processes. Location intelligence would play a crucial role in designing systems and frameworks that function seamlessly and can withstand drastic future shocks.
“If you look at the industry we serve — brands with physical point of sales or delivery hubs — data-driven location intelligence offers independence from mobility constraints”, Hollberg adds.
One of Targomo’s customers is Huuva, a Finnish ghost kitchen provider. “Using our solutions, they were able to filter suitable properties more effectively. While earlier there used to be multiple site visits and week-long analysis, now it’s all data-based and really fast”.
Outlook for 2022
Hollburg states that Targomo is growing strongly in terms of new clients and will expand its team in 2022.
“Our API is used worldwide, and we aim to further internationalize our TargomoLOOP analysis platform. It already covers data for 20+ countries, and is being rapidly expanded. We still have the highest level of awareness among German customers, but this year we want to actively acquire new customers from core markets in Europe and beyond”.
In July last year, Targomo partnered with CrossWinds, a Swiss location technology consultancy, to expand its reach in location and geo-analytics market segment.
“They developed some really interesting applications based on our API. We see ourselves as a technology provider, so a partnership with a location intelligence specialists like Crosswind that offers individual programming and consulting services, is the ideal complement”.
Targomo has also partnered with retail and brand consultancy Gruppe Nympenburg and the mapping specialists Ubilabs and Localyse.
The company is quite confident about the authenticity, reliability and accuracy of its spatial datasets. “We work with reputed companies and select our data partners very carefully. We also work a lot with open data”.
