Singapore-based UnaBiz, owner of the Sigfox technology, has completed a Series B funding extension worth $25 million, to take its total Series B investment, initially pegged at $25 million in late 2021, to over $50 million. The new funding comes from existing investors, led by Tokyo-based investment firm SPARX Group, with Singapore venture duo G K Goh Holdings and Optimal Investment also involved.
The injection of funds follows a frantic six-month restructuring period, following its acquisition of Sigfox in April, and represents both a vote of confidence in a job well-done, and a further boost for a job only half-done. UnaBiz said it had reduced Sigfox losses by almost two thirds, in six months from around $54m in 2021 to around $20m in 2022. The funds will go on expansion in key territories and industries, as well as on developing the Sigfox R&D story.
Philippe Chiu, co-founder and co-chief at UnaBiz, stated: “Aside from investments to support business development in strategic markets, we will use the fresh funds to further enhance core low-power capabilities [and to] enable cost-effective long-range connectivity [for] very low-value assets. Our portfolio will also be expanded to integrate more LPWAN and satellite tech, ultimately providing aggregated and clean data through UnaConnect service.”
In other words, and as discussed by Chiu’s business partner Henri Bong in an interview with French-language title Journal du Net, UnaBiz will keep faith with Sigfox’s long-time R&D promise on commercial dollar-priced trackers for smart labels, and other apps, while also pushing its contemporary vision of a ‘unified LPWAN world’, where Sigfox plays nice with rival low-power wide-area (LPWAN) tech (LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, LTE-M, TS-UNB, Wi-SUN et al).
The Journal du Net interview also makes reference to development of recycled and recyclable IoT components for massive-scale commercial IoT trackers – a topic, along with smart labels, that will see concerted focus from all sides of the IoT connectivity divide in 2023. Chiu said the Sigfox savings UnaBiz has achieved in six months are down, mostly, to its purchase agreement with the Commercial Court of Toulouse, which handled its receivership.
He told Enterprise IoT Insights: “We did what we said we would do. But we have to emphasise, as well, the importance of the French receivership process – which allowed us to drop some major liabilities, without which the turnaround plan would not have been that obvious. The results of the new business, in such a short period, have certainly contributed to reassuring our existing shareholders to support us in this extension round.”
The single most major liability, dropped from the debt pile in the acquisition, was Sigfox’s failed USA network operation, which filed for its own Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a Delaware court, just ahead of the sale, owing almost $150 million in unsecured debt. Its new expansion drive, to be funded by the Series B round, focuses on Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East; there is no mention of the US, which will only now be addressed via unified LPWAN solutions.
Chiu said Unabiz had executed its plan with Sigfox, so far. “Integrating the technology, resources, and staff has not been a simple exercise, but we were prepared for it – firstly, by creating a realistic business plan, which was cross-checked over months with a sizable team of Sigfoxers, operators, and partners, and then by pitching it to the Toulouse court. Even though it was a good plan, everyone was concerned about our ability to deliver it,” he said.
“[But] we beefed-up at board level, increasing the team to six, from three before. Which has enabled us to run multiple transformations simultaneously. We consolidated the teams, taking into account the [new] international nature of UnaBiz. So we now have major offices in Singapore, France, and Taiwan. Our products are no longer engineered only in Taipei or in Labège, but across multiple regional centres, under a unified management process.”
At board level, Unabiz has appointed Loic Barancourt from Thinxtra as chief commercial officer (“pipeline and revenue streams”), Rémi François from ENGIE as chief operating officer (“operations and cost”), and Alexis Susset from Soracom as chief technology officer (“moving the tech forward”). All of them are Sigfox familiars, as well. “Thanks to past experience… we had a pretty clear idea of where and how to drive the new UnaBiz,” reflected Chiu.
The Journal du Net is an interesting read; in conversation with Enterprise IoT Insights, Chiu is more reticent on some of the points it raises about integrations, innovations, and even IPOs. “We have to admit that starting a unification movement across the globe is not an easy task. But although we have not communicated much on this topic, we have been engaging bilaterally with interested parties to develop solutions for some multinational projects,” he said.
On the prospect of a Series C round and an eventual IPO, he responded: “Since we just closed our Series B extension, Series C and IPO are not our first priority; the group will be focused on growth in the new markets and key verticals.” He added: “While the global economic downturn is a challenge faced by most companies, the global supply chain disruption is a key concern for us, as we are focused on delivery to our customers.”
A recent interview with Australia-based Konvoy Group, about expanding beer-keg tracking with UnaBiz into Europe and North America, notes that IoT hardware is hard to come by. But Chiu also clarified that UnaBiz will look at alternatives to Google, to host its backend system, in order to support geographic expansion into new markets. “We are tech agnostic, which is true for cloud platforms and technologies,” he said.
“Even though we are satisfied with Google Cloud running our Sigfox backend currently, it is not guaranteed that this cloud platform will be available in every country or region that has some specific regulatory requirements regarding data processing and management. So we are making sure that the Sigfox technology is not bound exclusively to a single cloud provider.”
Chiu also offered up a titbit on the IoT innovation piece (dirt-cheap recyclable trackers), as popularised by and inherited from Sigfox. He said: We have been working on ways of integrating [Sigfox] into the assets and even materials. To now, most IoT solutions are ‘add-ons’ to existing assets, generating costs of integration – from retrieval, attachment, welding, configuration, redeployment. Which are discovered late as hidden costs.”
The UnaBiz strategy, he said, is to explode these costs, to make them part of the stated TCO (total-cost of ownership), and reduced by in the OEM process. “They add up and, ultimately, derail the project – as the TCO jumps drastically. [But] cars, for example, now come with cellular connectivity, for safety or infotainment systems. So why wouldn’t Sigfox follow the same trend, given some of its unique attributes such as resilience to jamming?”
Very clearly, UnaBiz is looking to keep the good bits of Sigfox, including the network technology and innovation streak, and jettison the bad bits, including its narrow view of technology, and its restrictive business model. It also wants, apparently, to stop all the hype-talk; Chiu won’t be drawn on making finger-in-the-air forecasts about massive IoT volumes, as a strategy just to stir the market.
He responded: “Regarding numbers and projections in massive IoT, we have taken the position to stop communicating on them especially from a global market perspective, and let the experts and the analysts do what they do best. We prefer focusing on sharing actual projects that are delivered, backed by real figures.”
Speaking about the new Series C injection, Shuhei Abe, president and chief executive at SPARX Group, said. “UnaBiz acquisition of [Sigfox] enhances and cements the group’s position as the global leader of massive IoT. As the technology owner of the most energy-efficient LPWAN technology available on the market, UnaBiz is in a prime position to champion the convergence of massive IoT technologies.”
Goh Yew Lin, managing director at G. K. Goh Holdings, said: “We are happy to increase our investment in UnaBiz as it accelerates its geographical reach following the acquisition of Sigfox. The company’s team has demonstrated focus, foresight and entrepreneurial energy, and we look forward to the next phases of its growth story.”
