Singapore-based smart access company, igloohome, raised US$15 million in a recent funding round and launched iglooworks, its suite of smart access solutions.
The US$15 million funding round is co-led by Insignia Ventures Partners, Wavemaker Partners, and SEEDS Capital.
New investors include Kickstart Ventures, TH Capital, Pine Venture Partners, On Asset Management, InnoVen Capital and a group of angel investors.
Existing investors Singtel Innov8 and Great Noble International also participated in the round.
This brings their total funding to US$20 million, after combining their US$1 million seed funding and last year’s US$4 million Series A.
On the opportunities investors see in igloohome, co-founder and CEO Anthony Chow said that they see igloohome solving a problem that affects home and property owners, facilities managers, and different industries.
“They recognise the value we bring with our solutions, which are offline so that they are more secure and reliable,” he added.
“With the launch of iglooworks, we also offer a range of online solutions that allow for real-time features, which helps to solve a different set of issues.”
Steve Melhuish, co-founder and previous CEO of PropertyGuru, will join the board as well.
“Steve brings with him his expertise and contacts in property, which would help igloohome to scale even faster in the real estate space,” Anthony told Vulcan Post.
“Also, he has a lot of experience in scaling teams and understands the Asia region very well, which would be very valuable to igloohome.”
The funds will be used for research and development of new products, such as locks for safes, cam locks, rim locks, storage box locks, latches, among others, and software for both igloohome and iglooworks.
igloohome, who has over 100 distribution partners and more than 100 integration partners, also plans to use the funds to support new and existing distribution partners globally, especially in Europe, the US, and Asia Pacific.
iglooworks is targeted at enterprise customers in the real estate and infrastructure sectors, and users can manage solutions via a dashboard and easily filter and export data.
Its enterprise-grade variations of existing products and new products incorporate new communication protocols such as NB-IoT, Cat-M, LTE, Z-wave, and more.
These protocols allow for added online features of access solutions, including multi-factor authentication and real-time access information, while ensuring that battery consumption of the devices remain low.
igloohome is currently working with several partners to bring its IoT-connected perimeter security solution to the market.
The Smart Padlock, a new product designed for industry access applications, is a device that can be used to secure trucks, gates, assets, and more.
It taps on iglooworks’ solutions and igloohome’s AlgoPIN technology.
Anthony said in the statement, “In the past three years, we have developed a range of smart locks that are creating great value for vacation rental hosts and home owners around the world.”
With iglooworks, we have developed a solution that not only can save businesses and governments up to millions of dollars per year, but also improve security and surveillance.
Anthony Chow, co-founder and CEO of igloohome
As Airbnb hosts, igloohome’s co-founders were frustrated by the inconvenience of physical key exchanges, especially when guests wanted to check-in at odd hours.
igloohome was founded in 2015 to eliminate such problems and their first product launched in April 2016.
“Subsequently, igloohome discovered that the management of access is a problem that is not limited to Airbnb–most home and property owners faced similar issues,” Anthony explained.
“As such, igloohome developed its products and app further to cater to different market segments.”
He added that they received enquiries from different industries from real estate to telcos and utility companies to come up with larger-scale access management solutions.
On top of that, manpower costs are rising with the manual key exchange process.
“The pain points essentially got bigger as the scale gets bigger. iglooworks was launched to help solve these pain points.”
igloohome now works with property developers like Thailand’s Sansiri, Japan’s Mitsubishi, and Capitaland in Vietnam.
According to them, they have undergone year-on-year growth of four times since April 2016.
igloohome has also been accredited by the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) in Singapore.
When asked if igloohome is expanding, Anthony answered, “We are always on the lookout for good talent!”
Featured Image Credit: igloohome