Telus’ impact fund backs navigation tool in UK deal debut

Telus Pollinator Fund for Good, the corporate social impact fund of listed Canadian communications company Telus, has made its first investment a UK-headquartered business.

The firm has led a £7 million (€4.7 million; $5 million) funding round in Waymap, an indoor navigation tool that uses the hardware in a smartphone to accurately locate users to within one metre in indoor or underground spaces, where GPS-based location systems typically do not work.

Indoor positioning technology – which uses the gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer and compass built into smartphones to locate users – has particular relevance for people living with visual impairments, potentially enabling them to move with greater ease around indoor and underground spaces, such as transit systems. The company’s flagship project with Washington DC has seen it deploy across 30 train stations and nearly 1,000 bus stops.

“One of the things we found appealing was the democratisation of movement,” said Blair Miller, managing partner of Telus Pollinator for Fund for Good, “And so we looked at public spaces and transit as a massive opportunity to improve outcomes for citizens. We found that alone to be a very compelling use case.”

But beyond the case for accurate indoor navigation, said Miller, was the strategy to “evolve from just strictly navigation to look at what’s beyond that to enhance experience. I think that is incredibly inspiring.”

Telus’s impact fund was established in late 2020 with a C$100 million ($73 million; €67.8 million) initial commitment from its parent company. The firm has deployed around half of that so far, said Miller, who declined to comment on overall fund performance, instead saying the fund is held to account for financial outcomes and “is by no means concessionary”. Around 60 percent of its portfolio is Canada-headquartered.

Miller described the fund as stage agnostic, noting that the Pollinator fund had the support of the Telus organisation to look for growth stage opportunities “where we can deliver impact at scale over a tighter timeline”.