GapMaps was founded in 2013 by Tim Shaw with a simple premise: businesses were making major location decisions on gut feel, when the data to do it properly already existed, it just was not accessible in one place. That became GapMaps Live, a browser based platform combining GIS mapping with demographic, economic, competitor, and customer intelligence, letting brands compare candidate sites, model catchments, and track competitor locations without waiting months for a traditional consulting engagement.

The company has grown from its Melbourne base into a platform used across more than 40 countries spanning Australia, Asia, the Middle East, India, and North America, tracking more than 200 million verified points of interest and combining published census data with mobile device visitation data down to grids as fine as 100 by 100 meters. Global brands including McDonald's, Starbucks, KFC, Subway, and Anytime Fitness rely on GapMaps for site selection, customer profiling, and market share analysis, and the company has more recently opened a Data Marketplace, adding partner datasets like AI driven consumer segmentation from Panolytica alongside its own POI and demographic products. GapMaps holds ISO27001 and SOC2 Type 2 certifications, underscoring its focus on serving as a trusted data layer for enterprise and government location decisions rather than just a mapping tool.