Who is behind K-Stra?
Geomarketing specialists turning mathematics, statistics and software into location answers anyone can read.
K-Stra is built by geomarketing specialists, working from Europe and Australia, who apply mathematics, statistics and software engineering to the economics of places. They designed it for the Australian market to answer one question with evidence instead of instinct: where should a business open, expand or invest?
Where is the K-Stra team based?
On two continents: Europe and Australia.
Europe
Part of the K-Stra team works from Europe, on the same product and the same data as the rest of the team.
Australia
The market K-Stra is built for, and where it runs: a dedicated server in Sydney, so your datasets, your analyses and your results stay in Australia.
What expertise is K-Stra built on?
Three disciplines, applied to one problem: where a business should be.
Mathematics and statistics
Official statistics are published for areas, but customers live at addresses. K-Stra spreads population estimates onto 14.5 million address points, weighted by the size of each building, so any area you draw adds up the people inside it.
Software engineering
Drive-time areas come from a routing engine K-Stra built in-house. It runs Dijkstra’s algorithm on the Australian road network and returns a drive of up to two hours in 50–100 milliseconds.
Geomarketing practice
The methods inside the app — catchments, competitor density, overlap between stores, customer origin — come from people who have worked in geomarketing for years, and are explained in plain English inside the app.
Where does the name K-Stra come from?
One name, two meanings: one describes what runs under the bonnet, the other what you get out of it.
Dijkstra
Edsger W. Dijkstra designed the algorithm that finds the shortest path through a network. It is literally the engine of every K-Stra drive-time area.
The name says what is underneath: mathematics, performance and large-scale data, not a graphic layer on a map.
Key strategy
Key strategy, powered by AI. Most location choices are still made on instinct, a site visit and a radius drawn on a map; the key strategy is to put numbers on the same decision before the money is committed.
Powered by AI means you do not need to learn the software first: you ask in plain English, and the assistant builds the analysis for you to check and confirm.
What is Dijkstra’s algorithm, and how does K-Stra use it?
Think of the road network as junctions joined by streets, each street with a travel time. Dijkstra’s algorithm starts at your address and visits junctions in order of how quickly you can reach them.
Because it always expands the nearest junction first, every junction it reaches carries its true fastest time. Stop at 10 minutes, and you have every point a driver can reach in 10 minutes.
Several origins, one pass
With several stores, the search starts from all of them at once and explores the network a single time.
Bands on real roads
Up to six bands between 0 and 120 minutes, by car, by car avoiding motorways or on foot, with normal or heavy traffic for cars.
What else do people ask about K-Stra?
Is K-Stra an Australian product?
K-Stra was built for the Australian market by a team working from Europe and Australia, and the app runs in Sydney. The steps that use providers outside Australia are listed on the coverage page.
Who is K-Stra designed for?
Businesses that have to decide where to be: retailers and franchise networks choosing sites, property developers and investors reading an area, sales and marketing teams mapping their customers. K-Stra sells to businesses only — buying credits asks for a company name and billing details.
Who was Edsger W. Dijkstra?
A Dutch computer scientist (1930–2002) and one of the founders of the discipline. He described his shortest-path algorithm in 1959 and received the Turing Award in 1972. The algorithm is still the standard way to find the quickest routes through a network.
Is K-Stra written as one word?
No. The name is written K-Stra: a capital K, a hyphen and a capital S. Written that way it reads both as a short form of Dijkstra and as the K of Key strategy.
Do I have to talk to someone before I start?
No. You can open the app and explore without an account, sign up yourself when you want to run an analysis, and start with 40 free credits. For tailored Enterprise terms, write to info@k-stra.com.
How do customers get help once they use the app?
From Support in the account menu of the app: pick a topic, describe what happened and attach screenshots if they help. The answer arrives by email, usually within one business day.
Meet the product,
not just the team.
The quickest way to see how we think is to run an analysis on a street you know well.
Open the app — free to exploreQuestions first? Write to info@k-stra.com