The company targets cargo companies with the new IoT platform
U.S. IoT firm AKUA has raised $3 million in funding, which will allow the company to accelerate the deployment of its IoT gateway platform.
The investment round was led by San Francisco-based Crosslink Capital, with additional contributions from London-based Talis Capital and the San Francisco based Enterprise Security Syndicate.
“These investments will help us advance the development of our secure IoT gateway platform and accelerate the growth of our company logistics and supply chain market. We sell directly to the cargo owners where IoT sensors can improve their process efficiencies and greatly lower their losses and security risks,” said AKUA ounder and CEO, Neil Furukawa.
AKUA’s gateway platform uses a Data as a Service (DaaS) model that easily integrates into existing business process systems and data analytics platforms, the firm said. Cargo owners have the flexibility of using either their own analytics and visibility platforms with AKUA data, or AKUA’s cloud-based, user configurable dashboard and mobile application solution.
The company said that the solution has been successfully adopted by a number of customers in the agricultural sector.
“AKUA successfully demonstrated how IoT devices can be utilized to improve the logistics efficiency and monitor the environmental conditions of our potato seed export shipments,” said Dirk Parkinson, owned of Parkinson Seed Farm. “With our initiative to increase exports, we will now be able to analyze the data in real time and make real-time logistics decisions prior to shipments arriving at their destinations.”
“Within the vast IoT market, we identified a strong use case for cargo tracking of high-value items, perishable goods and sensitive security goods by leveraging IoT. AKUA has highly advanced technology to provide much needed transparency and security for cargo owners, and we look forward to working with the team to realize the Company’s strong potential,” Vasile Foca, co-founder and Managing Partner of London-based VC firm Talis Capital, said.
IoT gateways offer local processing and storage, as well as the ability to autonomously control field devices based on data input by sensors. IoT gateways, which can be a hardware or virtual appliance, receive data from IoT sensors, which can be sent to the cloud. IoT gateways also receive information from the cloud, which then goes to the device itself. This means that all the information moving from an IoT device to the cloud, or vice versa, goes through the connected IoT gateway. Learn more about the important role of IoT gateways here.
