CARTO
Turn Location Data into Business Outcomes

Javier de la Torre, the geospatial technology pundit, is a strong advocate of the crucial role location intelligence plays in optimizing operational performance, strategic investments, and everyday decisions. He founded CARTO in 2008 to empower organizations and individuals to discover and predict key insights through location data. The company brings to the table an intuitive, SaaS cloud computing platform for organizations to build self-service location-based applications that can help augment operational performance, calculated investments, and decision-making. Embedded into CARTO’s Location Intelligence platform is a gamut of tools—Builder, Engine, Data Observatory, Location Data Services, and Mobile SDK—that makes location an accessible and functional dimension of analysis, empowering organizations to unearth data and gain powerful insights easily.

CARTO’s Builder—a web-based drag and drop analysis tool—drastically reduces time-to-insight through the incorporation of widget-driven dashboards and unified workflows. Working hand-in-hand with Builder is CARTO Engine—an open source tool—that enables business analysts to use several APIs for creating advanced, dynamic geospatial datasets and scalable maps for their applications. While managing over hundreds of millions of records, these tools enrich location data with relevant, flexible datasets garnered from CARTO’s own Data Observatory. The Data Observatory is way more beneficial when combined with other data services like routing and geocoding. Besides, the firm’s efficient and affordable SaaS model allows its clients to evolve progressively.

More to its glory, CARTO recently launched its first software development kit—Mobile SDK 4.0—for Android and iOS. By leveraging CARTO’s SDK, users can develop tailored mobile applications with native offline mapping, location data services, and the analytic property of location intelligence. Location services and map reading on mobile applications more often than not demand internet/ online connection. CARTO’s Mobile SDK tackles the problem conveniently by rendering seamless mapping displays and services like geocoding, routing, and searching even in an offline scenario.

Moving ahead, the company anticipates a strategic expansion into newer and broader markets so as to accomplish its prime mission, i.e. to democratize location intelligence

This is crucial for developing commercial applications in industries like farming, development, and humanitarian endeavors in areas with limited cellular coverage. Furthermore, the SDK extends support for geographical data types, 3D modeling, vector basemaps, alongside the potential to dole out millions of features.

Lonely Planet, a premier travel media company and the world’s largest travel guide book publisher, edged on CARTO’s native SDK to devise mapping for its popular, free, and offline-ready application, Guides by Lonely Planet for Android. Harnessing CARTO’s Mobile SDK, the client was able to deliver travelers to exotic destinations around the globe through a user-friendly interface for offline mapping capabilities. The technology made it easier for users to avail Lonely Planet’s top experiences and essential tips hands-on in an offline map format.

Owing to the fine-tuned GIS and web mapping tools that CARTO offers, it is unsurprising that the firm boasts of a wide-ranging clientele spanning banking and finance, government, media, natural resources, education, NGOs, and real estate to name a few. Moving ahead, the company anticipates a strategic expansion into newer and broader markets so as to accomplish its prime mission, i.e. to democratize location intelligence. Under the responsible leadership of de la Torre, CARTO has matured from a revolutionary idea to one of the burgeoning geospatial companies in the world today. Passionate about all things data, de la Torre aptly steers the firm by architecting the next phase of its growth plan to lay a pervasive impact on the contemporary market.