Listen to this articleThinxtra is building nationwide Internet of Things networks with Sigfox connectivity. The company currently operates in Australia, New Zealand & Hong Kong. Thinxtra was founded in early 2015 by IoT and network experts, all with complementary expertise to build & manage networks, market IoT, sales complex solutions and finance such projects.
Below is our interview with Renald Gallis, VP Ecosystem & Marketing at Thinxtra:
Q: You’ve recently announced $7.9 Million (AU$10M) in Series B funding round; could you tell us something more?
A: We raised altogether $31m ( $11m in seed & Series A, $10m with private investors & partners, $10m with CEFC, a government fund for clean energy) over a 18 months period. We are now fully funded to finalise our Sigfox nationwide networks dedicated to Internet of things in Australia, New Zealand & Hong Kong as well as to further develop our range of solutions for energy efficiencies & waste reductions.
Recommended: Q: Why is now a good time for developing IoT solutions?
A: Industrial IoT ( more interesting that consumer IoT or the fitbit likes that links to your phone) brings cost reduction, better visibility of assets, real time monitoring and can change the way they do business and disrupt their own industries.
2 years ago, no CEO had any vision or ideas about the potential of IoT. 1 year ago, they were all learning and starting talking about it, now they need to make it a reality following the presentation of their vision to the board & employees.
Q: Why LPWAN is the best technology to use with Industrial IoT?
A: LPWAN is so low cost, so low power consuming, and very long range (so reduce complexities & costs – no pairing with local short range gateways/routers), it does unleash the full potential of IoT by connecting everything & anything anywhere, it brings more granular data and thus increase the scale for larger sets of data for stronger analytics.
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Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: Very short term: Finalise the networks in Australia, New Zealand & Hong Kong.
Short-term: Develop a full range of solutions with clear benefits for Industrial IoT projects.
Mid-term: Implement all over AsiaPac via our system integrators and partners.
Long-term: use our Hong Kong hub to go global and bring low cost IoT solutions to the world.
