Company History

deCarta was founded in 1996 based on a unique, patented technology for managing spatial data. Between 1996 and 2000 deCarta developed the technology into a high-performance software platform, the Drill Down Server ® (DDS), for real-time location-based services such as vehicle navigation and emergency response centers.

In early 2001 the Company received funding from corporate investors including Ford Motor Company to enhance its products for location-based services in the telematics, wireless, and web portal markets. In 2002 the company acquired the assets of Gravitate and developed an industry-first product for integrating real-time traffic data with maps to support advanced navigation applications. In January 2003 deCarta merged with Televoke and added capabilities for hosting and service-delivery to its product portfolio. As part of the merger, the company received additional financing from Mobius Venture Capital, Cardinal Venture Capital and WI Harper Group.

As Internet portals began to incorporate advanced mapping capabilities into their local search offerings, deCarta provided the geospatial platform necessary for highly scalable map services that could be differentiated to emphasize each customer's unique brand and functionality. Industry leaders such as Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, Zillow, Multimap.com and Hotels.com pioneered the use of new technologies such as AJAX-based draggable maps, localized cartography, pedestrian routing and sophisticated search using deCarta's Drill Down Server ®. To support the rapidly evolving requirements in the Internet market, deCarta extended its Drill Down Server ® with advanced web services and JavaScript API's, new data sources and advanced traffic management using real-time traffic.

In 2006, deCarta opened its devZone, a free development environment that has grown to over 2,500 developers. Additionally, deCarta opened its Hosted Web Services (HWS), a hosted mapping service that allowed customers to develop advanced mapping and location services on a high reliability hosted environment using map data from leading providers. This offering expanded deCarta's products into the growing Software as a Service (SaaS) market for Internet, wireless and enterprise applications. In June the company changed its name from Telcontar to deCarta, based on the Latin word for map; "carta".

In December of 2006 deCarta officially entered the personal navigation market with the launch of its Navigation Software Development Kit (SDK). Driven by a vision to provide the enabling technology and services to the emerging Connected Navigation market, deCarta's Navigation SDK brought deCarta into the embedded navigation software realm, giving software developers an environment that enables easier, efficient development of a fully customized navigation system for Personal Navigation Devices and smartphones.

In March 2007 the company continued to expand its solutions for the personal navigation device market with the introduction of its white-labeled (non-branded) Navigation Application. The Navigation Application uniquely enables OEMs, ODMs and consumer electronics brands to quickly customize and specifically tailor the personality, the look, feel, sounds and the voice of the turn-by-turn navigation application to appeal to targeted demographics in mass markets. deCarta also developed a Connected Navigation Server, based on DDS and adding a mobile network gateway, feed handlers for traffic, local search weather and other dynamic content sources and an advertising/monetization engine.

In July 2007, deCarta closed a $15-million Series C-1 expansion round of funding to accelerate the growth of the organization in new markets and to expand its international reach to further capitalize on deCarta's industry-leading LBS software platforms. Led by existing investor Norwest Venture Partners, other existing investors including Mobius Venture Capital and Cardinal Venture Capital were also participants in the round.

As an "industry first," in November 2007 deCarta and Inrix announced the availability of predictive traffic on an LBS platform. The availability of truly dynamic, predictive traffic flow information revolutionizes deCarta's ability to deliver new levels of traffic-aware applications for mobile navigation, enterprise and Internet location-based services.

During the same period of 2007, Nielsen Mobile, a division of The Nielsen Company released its third quarter Mobile Application Report on usage and revenue from wireless applications. The study reported that LBS had grown to account for 58 percent of the total application revenue among the top four U.S. wireless carriers. Of significance to deCarta, 63 percent of LBS applications downloaded were running on deCarta's technology. Furthermore, these deCarta-powered applications drove 90 percent of wireless LBS revenue at these carriers. These results demonstrate and reaffirm deCarta's dominance as the preferred provider of LBS software platforms. Among the companies using the deCarta platform for wireless LBS applications are market leaders including Networks In Motion, TeleNav, Wavemarket and Loopt.

Combining the company's core server-side geospatial technology with its specialized navigation application solutions and key LBS partner relationships, in March of 2008 the company announced its real-time, two-way (RTTW) connected navigation service for next-generation personal navigation devices, and GPS-enabled handsets and smartphones. deCarta demonstrated the new revolutionary connected navigation platform, reference architecture and select applications in its booth at the CTIA Wireless 2008 conference in April.

In September, the company launched deCarta Mobile^™, a location platform supporting location-enabled application deployment on mobile devices. deCarta Mobile is a client/server architecture with easy-to-use J2ME and Apple iPhone client application programming interfaces (APIs) that provides a framework for rapid development of mobile mapping applications. The framework provides mobile application developers with the ability to easily implement modular fluid maps, panning, zooming, routing, geocoding, reverse geocoding and pin overlays into their applications. deCarta is the first company to provide a J2ME mapping API.

In October 2008, the company announced commercial availability of its revolutionary connected navigation service unveiled in April, along with un-named major customer deployment of the technology for retail consumer availability later in the month in advance of the holiday shopping season.