BindiMaps signs Australia Post as retail maps gain traction

A Sydney start-up that maps inside major retail sites has signed Australia Post as a customer as it rolls out a new technology to help people navigate with super accuracy.

Anna Wright, Founder of Bindi Maps

A start-up that has created indoor maps navigating retail settings for the vision-impaired has landed Australia Post as a major new customer, as the service rolls out its new technology across its stores in two capital cities.

BindiMaps leverages the camera on a user’s phone to guide them through the store, recognising the layout and various focal points, taking up to 600 photos every 10 minutes.

The photos are then analysed in a server against previously filmed footage to update the user’s location in real time, with an accuracy of about 30cm.

Its new mapping system is far more accurate than Google Maps, says founder and chief executive Anna Wright, a former EY consultant who started the company in 2017, about a decade after she began going blind.

“The reason that I started BindiMaps was because in the middle of my consulting career, something happened – it was like you’d taken my glasses and spread Vaseline all over the right side,” Ms Wright said. “Many, many doctors’ appointments down the track, I was diagnosed with a really rare retinal condition at the back of my eye.”

The BindiMaps platform.

At the time, there were only 17 people in Australia and between 250 and 300 people with the condition worldwide, she said.

“So the diagnosis was lucky, and unlucky that I would go blind, and that sent me down a rabbit hole of what I could do or couldn’t do,” she said.

“I found out that I would still be able to do all of my work, but where it was going to be problematic was finding my way around. That’s when the process started with me trying to connect with the right type of technologists to basically replicate the experience of Google Maps, but indoors.”

BindiMaps raised $4m in a round led by Artesian Alternative Investments in 2021. The following year, the start-up was awarded $1m from the NSW Small Business Innovation and Research program, which has been used to develop its latest technology.

A BindiMaps platform on desktop.

BindiMaps is now using GoPros to map out locations and replicate them online as digital twins, a process that takes 40 minutes at an average-sized train station.

“We’re now using machine learning and AI algorithms to create the 3D model, so it doesn’t have to be perfect because the computer will fill in the blanks,” Ms Wright said.

The national postal service was impressed with BindiMaps’ new “hyperlocal” technology, and has now rolled it out at its Collins Street West GPO in Melbourne and Williamstown Community Hub in the inner-Melbourne suburb, and at its Kent St GPO in Sydney.

Australian Post executive general manager of retail Josh Bannister said it was important that all customers could navigate its stores.

“The introduction of this technology is a great opportunity for us to test and learn how we can support the vision-impaired community, as part of our commitment to innovation and modernising our Post Offices,” Mr Bannister said.

BindiMaps was growing in popularity among those without vision impairment as well, with the number of app downloads having increased 50 per cent over the past 12 months to 65,000.

Ms Wright said some people found retail settings overwhelming or sometimes unnecessarily complicated, and said her platform had found a niche in that ­regard.

For now the company’s business model works on a subscription model, charging $2 per square metre to businesses including Australia Post. It also charges a set-up fee.

However, BindiMaps also ­offers an analytics program that increasingly is attracting the eye of developers and major retail stores.