June 8, 2015, Singapore: Near, the leading location intelligence platform today announced Nandita Pal as the General Manager for its Southeast Asia & Hong Kong business, based in Singapore. The announcement comes a month post the appointment of Cameron Curtis for Near’s ANZ leadership.

Nandita will be responsible for scaling the business in the region with key partnerships and strategic deals. She would be driving adoption of Near’s mobile data solutions amongst marketers for consumer insights, targeting and attribution.

Nandita comes with over 21 years of rich technology and mobile services experience in launching and selling new services. Her experience encompassed global commercial sales, business development and global product marketing as well as go-to-market in the mobile and location based services space. She was a pioneer member of the team that launched Nokia Maps and has spent over seven years heading Services Sales for its smartphones portfolio in multiple regions and Product Marketing of Nokia’s Location based services for its mobile phones portfolio across the globe.

“Near has always believed in the power of mobile and location data and how it can connect online with offline. South East Asia is a mobile first market and marketers are very progressive when it comes to adopting new technologies” said Shobhit Shukla, Chief Revenue Officer of Near. “With Nandita’s vast experience working across various verticals, most notably Location and Nokia Maps for over seven years, we feel she is a great addition to our leadership team to drive our South East Asia & Hong Kong operations.” he added. “I have always believed People and Places are central to the entire data-driven marketing story and for this, mobile adoption and location data are going to be key drivers of growth and more so in a mobile-first region like South East Asia” said Nandita Pal.

“Near has been leading the innovation with over 6 years of first party location data collection and user profiling, which gives them incredible scale. The adoption they’ve seen from brands in the past 18 months is a testimony to the technology and I’m looking forward to leading them in their next phase of growth” she added.

Near raised $19Mn in Series B in October 2014, following which it has launched in Thailand & Vietnam in South East Asia, and Japan. More than 250 marquee brands use Near’s innovative data solutions to understand their consumers better. Near’s innovative “Art of Progress” campaign for Audi recently won the Gold at the Mob-Ex 2015 awards. Last month, Gartner recognized Near as the Cool Vendor in Consumer Dynamics, the only company from Asia Pacific to have made the cut. This is Near’s second regional leadership announcement this year. Last month, Cameron Curtis was appointed as the Head for its Australia & New Zealand business.

About Near: 

Near is an Ambient Intelligence Platform providing real-time information on places, people and products. The Near platform processes massive data from smart environments to understand consumer behaviour at a global scale. Currently processing data from over 1.5 billion devices, the Near platform powers Allspark, its flagship SaaS product for data-driven decisions, which enables customers to visualize, engage and analyze audiences.

Founded in 2012, Near is headquartered in Singapore with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Bangalore, Tokyo and Sydney. Today, Near has its global footprint across 44 countries, and works with marquee brands including P&G, Coca Cola, Ikea, Audi, McDonald’s, Toyota, Nike, and Samsung.

Near is backed by leading venture capitalists Sequoia Capital, JP Morgan Private Equity Group, Cisco Investments, Telstra Ventures, and Global Brain Japan. Visit www.near.co to find out more.