How Sydney-based startup BindiMaps is helping people navigate the great indoors

Navigating the outside world on foot has never been a completely easy feat, but getting lost in complex and unfamiliar indoor spaces like hospitals, multi-level office buildings, universities and shopping centres, or even events like the Australian Open, especially when you have someplace you need to be, can make for an equally frustrating experience and it happens to many people on a daily basis.

Sydney-based inclusive wayfinding mobile app BindiMaps, which was launched in 2017 by co-founders CEO Dr Anna Wright, CCO Mladen Jovanovic and CPO Tony Burrett, is revolutionising the way people navigate indoor spaces, with the app able to be implemented in practically any indoor or outdoor space.

The BindiMaps app has been designed to help people of all abilities navigate unfamiliar indoor locations and point them in the right direction with 10-20 times more accuracy than Google Maps.

By using a simple, natural language audio system, BindiMaps can describe where users are and what’s around them, provide precise location information, and deliver the optimal and most accessible routes, and the best way to get to their chosen destination.

The internal navigation tool delivers real-time navigation information via audio, text or map cues. It also provides general safety information, hazard warnings, and evacuation and accessibility routes.

SmartCompany Plus spoke with Dr Wright about how she is leading the wave of inclusive tech in indoor environments through BindiMaps and why the app is making every space 100% accessible for everyone.

Google Maps for indoors

Dr Wright, who has a degenerative retinal condition that impacts the vision in her right eye, said she was working as a senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney’s business school when she had the idea for BindiMaps. 

“I have a very rare retinal condition and I should be blind,” she said.

“I was working as an academic at the university and even though I knew where most classrooms were, I knew that the problem was going to be navigating. It was just going to be really tricky to find my way around.

“I thought, why hasn’t somebody been able to make Google Maps work indoors? So that was always the thought, but then a friend of mine sent me a link about a program accelerator called SheStarts, so I thought I’m going to apply.”

Expanding nationally

BindiMaps was launched with a $100,000 grant from Australian startup accelerator BlueChilli’s SheStarts accelerator program for women-led startups and the startup also raised a further $1 million, which was used to expand the team and start the nationwide rollout. 

According to the BindiMaps website, the app is now being used in six states across Australia, as well as overseas in Auckland, New Zealand and the Budapest Airport in Hungary.

Bindi Maps currently supports upwards of hundreds of locations around Australia and the world, with the exact number expected to grow within the space of a few weeks because of the speed at which they’re rolling out at different locations.

From the beginning, the app was designed to solve a problem and assist users who are vision impaired and blind to navigate unfamiliar indoor spaces, with the app also available for the broader community to use, in a growing number of locations around Australia.

Dr Wright said BindiMaps, whose headquarters is based in Surrey Hills in Sydney, has staff in Melbourne and one staff member on the Gold Coast, has grown a lot over the past three years.

“We’ve grown a lot, especially coming out of COVID, and towards the end of COVID people have been coming back, it has been great,” she said.

“We’re selling into a lot of big businesses and the government. We’ve sold into Hungary and we’re writing contracts with Singapore at the moment. So that’s been fantastic. 

“From a customer perspective, and from a user perspective, we started as an app for people who are blind or have low vision. 

Inclusion is key

“When we were doing all our trials, we realised that everybody was getting lost indoors. So we expanded that and now we say that the app is just highly customisable. 

Related Article Block Placeholder Article ID: 271668

“From a user perspective, we find that people love our app.” 

Dr Wright said the best tip she has for startups wanting to create an inclusive environment is to include all people during the planning and delivery of the product.

“I actually think it’s really important that we build things that can be used by everyone,” she said. 

“You don’t want to leave people behind when you’re building an amazing new product and my best tip for that is to always include people with lived experience in your user research.

“In building your app, don’t do what a lot of big companies have gotten in trouble for — closing their eyes to see whether it works if they were blind. They don’t have the lived experience to know what that’s like.

“So include people, include all people, in planning and delivering your product.”

The future for BindiMaps

It’s been a big year for BindiMaps, with the app mapping over 1.6 million square meters of the Australian Open precinct earlier this year to provide accessible wayfinding to users, for the second year in a row.

In June, BindiMaps announced that it had been selected as a global champion by the World Summit Awards (WSA) Global Congress under the Smart Settlements & Urbanisation category.

As well as BindiMaps, there is BindiKiosk which allows visitors to independently navigate indoors using the kiosk, reducing the need to ask for directions and minimising staff interruptions, and BindiWeb which is a web-based route planning tool that allows visitors to view detailed maps of your space, and get directions, before they arrive at your location.

Dr Wright added that she wants to continue to expand the BindiMaps app globally into the future. 

“So a few things that we’ll be doing over the next five years are many, many more locations across more countries,” she said.

“We will be changing the current version of our technology mid next year where we won’t need to have any infrastructure, we will just be able to map a space using the smartphone and we’ve got that in development at the moment, which is really exciting because it just means we can do everything much faster.

“The other thing you’ll see us doing is things like the sensory sensitivity, mounting options, so we’ll be catering to more and more diverse needs. 

“At the end of the day, it’s just going to be that more people can use us in more places.”