US-based retail inventory management platform developer Radar has received $16m of funding from investors including NTT Docomo Ventures, a corporate venturing subsidiary of mobile network operator NTT Docomo, VentureBeat has reported.
Novel TMT Ventures, the venture capital firm backed by telecoms firm Novel Group, also participated in the round, as did Founders Fund’s Pathfinder vehicle, Beanstalk Ventures, Align Ventures, Sound Ventures, Colle Capital and two of Radar’s retail clients.
Founded in 2013, Radar has devised an automated sensor that identifies the precise location of goods in a shop through radio-frequency identification tags affixed to the products, and computer vision technology applied to footage from four cameras within the device.
The sensor enables retailers to conduct granular analytics processes to assess stock levels and patterns of demand, and could eventually be adapted to support technologies such as autonomous checkouts.
The capital will support the first commercial deployment of the technology, with three unnamed enterprise clients later this year. Radar had previously received $600,000 in external funding according to VentureBeat, which did not provide further details.