sourcing.quaking.handicaps. sulk.held.raves. nail.hush.lawful.
No, those are not gibberish. Those are the addresses for Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, the White House in Washington and Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, respectively, based on the geocoding system developed by start-up what3words.
London-based what3words distils locations and complex Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates into three-word addresses. Founded in 2013, the start-up has split the entire world into 57 trillion 3-metre by 3-metre squares – with each square possessing its own unique three-word address assigned by the company’s algorithm.
“It’s just a very simple way to talk about location because the world is actually quite poorly addressed – it’s a big issue,” said Giles Jones, chief marketing officer at what3words, in an interview.
Street addresses are common in many countries, but there are still vast areas in the developing world without such a system in place, which makes it difficult to find an exact location in an easily identifiable manner.
While GPS can be used as an alternative to street addresses, its system of numbers and letters are often difficult to dictate. “GPS coordinates are brilliant [because] they cover everywhere and are super accurate, but they are also really difficult to remember and communicate,” said Jones, who indicated that getting one number wrong in a set of coordinates would result in a location at another country.
The unique three-word addresses by what3words have become available at a time when more people worldwide are using voice recognition systems, either with smart home assistants, wearable devices or car navigation systems.
The accuracy provided by geocoding – the computational process of turning a physical address to an exact location on Earth – like what3words offers is also increasingly required in fields such as transport, logistics and insurance.
“We have done tests where we’ve put street addressing up against what3words addresses at the same place, and GPS-tagged the different drivers, and we’re mostly 28 per cent more efficient,” said Jones. That is because what3word users can get an exact point, such as the entrance of a building, as the final location. In contrast, street addresses on maps often just point to where a building is located, which is not helpful for deliverymen trying to find a specific entrance to a large office complex as an example.
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Investors in what3words include the venture capital arm of China’s SAIC Motor Corp, Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures, Intel Capital, carmaker Daimler and Germany’s Deutsche Bahn Digital Ventures. In 2016, the start-up raised US$8.5 million in its Series B funding round.
At present, what3words’ geocoding system is available in more than 30 languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Thai and Tamil. The firm currently generates revenue from licensing its code to businesses that want a more accurate way to pinpoint locations anywhere in the world.
The what3words app, which is available on both Apple’s App Store and Google Play, enables users to search with a three-word address to pull up its exact location. Tapping the “Navigate here” button allows users to choose which maps app they would like to use for getting directions to their destination.
The company has seen rapid growth in the number of users in China, where it works with mapping and navigation services provider AutoNavi, which is owned by Alibaba Group Holding. New York-listed Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
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“China is interesting because there’s a kind of a perfect storm of a not brilliant addressing system and the fact that China has leapfrogged the West in voice [recognition adoption],” Jones said. He described how drivers of Mercedes-Benz A-Class cars in China are already using what3words to locate addresses.
The start-up is also in talks with a number of Chinese logistics firms, according to Jones, who declined to elaborate.
In the UK, emergency response services accept what3words addresses, which means that users can provide an exact location even if their car breaks down in the middle of a highway.
The company has also gained traction in developing economies like Mongolia, where the postal service, banks and even Pizza Hut will deliver to three-word addresses because much of the country does not yet have a proper addressing system.
To be sure, what3words is not the first company to further simplify location identification in the smartphone era. Google, for example, has its Plus codes – a combination of six letters and numbers, followed by the name of the city that is simplified from GPS coordinates. A shortened mixture of letters and numbers, however, can prove difficult to dictate – the letters “D” and “B”, for example, could sound similar over the phone.
The what3words address system also remains niche because the start-up works primarily with businesses. Jones said what3words must push for continued market education and increased adoption before its three-word address system truly takes off.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Find your way in just three words
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