Ayla Networks – IoT platforms for OEMs

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Ayla’s big round shows there are no doubts about the direction of smart homes among investors

Ayla Networks

Santa Clara-based IoT company Ayla Networks announced a US$39 million early Monday morning, a Series C round co-led by design manufacturer 3NOD and Ants Capital.

“Ayla is fast becoming one of the leading IoT platforms for OEMs that are manufacturing and shipping IoT products globally,” said David Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Ayla Networks since 2010. Before then Friedman served as VP Business Development at ZeroG Wireless.

Ayla focuses heavily on smart homes: appliances, water heaters and softeners (HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and home fire products. They’ve racked up a number of clients including Fujistu General, Hunter Fan and Ozner. They claim to have doubled their number of employees, but didn’t provide an exact figure for people under head.

Other new investors included Acorn Pacific and Mitsui. Returning investors include Cisco Investments, Voyager Capital, Crosslink Capital, International Finance Corp. (IFC, a division of World Bank Group), Linear Venture, SAIF Partners/Oriza Ventures and SJF Ventures.

Ayla-Networks-offices-in-Santa-Clara

Ayla Networks offices in Santa Clara

“With IoT clouds operating in multiple regions worldwide, and with major customers continuing to expand their Ayla-powered IoT product lines,” Friedman continued, “Ayla believes that the ‘when’ of the IoT is right now—and that Ayla Networks is well positioned to help manufactures take advantage of growing market for connected products.”

The smart home market has impressive projections and might be worth approximately US$121.73 billion by 2022 according to Markets and Markets. Fifteen percent of that market will in the Asia-Pacific region according to the same analysis, but 60 per cent in North America and 20 per cent in Europe.

The market includes some big names like Siemens AG in Germany, Schneider Electric in France, Honeywell and Acuity in the United States. Comcast, Time Warner and Nest Labs are also big participants in the market.

Ayla plans to expand abroad, building on their move to Japan earlier this year, plus new offices in Taiwan and manufacturing and growing IoT hub Shenzhen near to Hong Kong. Yin Min, the managing partner at Ants Capital running point on Ayla, pointed directly at China where they have been granted a license as an Internet Content Provider (ICP).

“The IoT market is like a rocket ship, and we’ve seen it gather speed rapidly in recent months,” said Friedman. “Manufacturers that a year ago simply wanted to build a connected product are now discovering the business transformation possible through harnessing the data generated by IoT products.”

Image Credit: Ayla

The article IoT startup Ayla scores US$39M investment to expand in Japan, China and Taiwan was first published on Geektime.

The post IoT startup Ayla scores US$39M investment to expand in Japan, China and Taiwan appeared first on e27.

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