Google Acquires Urban Engines To Boost Google Maps

US-headquartered technology company Google has acquired Urban Engines, a startup that provides location-based analytics around urban planning.

The financial details of the transaction haven’t been disclosed, but the startup will now be joining the Google Maps team at Mountain View.

In a blog post, the team confirmed that “Urban Engines is now a part of the Google Maps team! Location analytics is an important focus for both Urban Engines and Google, and we’re excited to combine forces to help organisations better understand how the world moves.”

Founded in 2012 by Shiva Shivakumar and Balaji Prabhakar, Urban Engines aims to disrupt urban mobility. Later two more co-founders, Giao Nguyen and Deepak Merugu joined the startup.

Its mapping, visualisation, reporting, and analytics platform creates actionable insights, for companies, cities, and commuters, from the increasing amounts of movement data generated by the Internet of Moving Things.

Urban Engine has so far worked for customers in America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, including partnering with mayoral offices and ministries within “smart cities” to better understand the mobility of their constituents to better plan improvements.

In 2014, Urban Engines raised an undisclosed amount of funding from notable investors including Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, GV, Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, and Ram Shriram, Google’s first investor.

Prior to this in May 2016, Google acquired Toronto-based enterprise software company, Synergyse, for an undisclosed amount. Earlier this month it was reported that Google is also reportedly  planning to develop a website in India, Bharat Saves, to offer information on financial planning. The target consumers for this platform will be homemakers, small business owners, the newly employed, retired persons, and farmers.

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