Purple, the self-styled “intelligent spaces company” has secured a $7m (£5.4m) investment, made up of a $3.9m growth loan from Boost&Co, and additional funds from existing investors.

The funds will be used to recruit in excess of 100 new staff at existing locations, including offices in the UK, Spain, the US, Singapore and Australia; and more international locations as they open. Purple now boasts 18m users, with deployments in 73 countries. It works with a range of brands and venues, including Molson Coors, Legoland, Jaguar, United Wireless Arena, City of York and TUI, helping them to learn more about their location and customer base, and take appropriate action.

Purple divides its offering into two specific segments: small businesses and enterprise customers. For small businesses it offers a free guest wi-fi solution and a cloud software license, which allows open access to marketing and analytics tools.

For enterprise customers it offers Purple WiFi, Location, and two new offerings: Fusion and Provision. Purple WiFi is its well-established guest wi-fi, analytics and marketing product. Purple Location is a location-based product that pinpoints devices, enables heat mapping, provides zone flow information and enables journey management. Purple Fusion is the latest offering, enabling connection to any type of data source, which can then be analysed and actioned. A variety of different data sources will be utilised to harvest information about any physical space.

“Weve had unbelievable growth over the last few years and this latest investment allows us to continue building momentum,” said Purple CEO, Gavin Wheeldon. “Our platform has now accelerated past 18m users and the opportunity for physical spaces to lead in analytics and personalised engagement is huge.”