Singapore-headquartered deep-tech startup Ackcio has raised S$4 million to support its wireless data acquisition technology business.
The funding round was led by a Singapore-based venture capital firm, Atlas Ventures, and included Enterprise Singapore, Wavemaker Partners, Aletra Capital Partners, AccelerAsia Ventures, Seasight Holdings, and angel investors.
Co-Founder and CEO, Dr Nimantha Baranasuriya, said that over the last 12 months, Ackcio’s revenue has scaled significantly as the company’s client base expanded into 22 markets across six continents. The company’s technology currently serves a diverse set of industrial monitoring applications in industries such as construction, infrastructure, mining, and rail.
In August, the company has also been included in Forbes Asia’s ‘100 to Watch’, a list that spotlights rising small companies and startups across various industries in the Asia Pacific. The list recognises companies that continue to address problems through innovative solutions despite the pandemic.
“It has been an exciting period of growth for us at Ackcio, and the recent recognition on Forbes Asia is just the icing on the cake,” Dr Baranasuriya said.
“We have our partners and clients to thank for entrusting us during what can only be described as a year of rapid change. The need for industries to digitalise is even more important than before, as companies adapt to new requirements posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, including ramping up of worker safety and increasing remote operations. This new round of funding will enable us to expand our offerings and continue supporting our customers to make industrial operations smarter and safer.”
With the new capital, Ackcio will focus on three key areas: continuing its rapid geographical expansion, scaling up research & development efforts, and venturing into more industry verticals.
Geographically, Ackcio’s plans to further strengthen its sales teams across Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Additionally, the company will scale up its research and development efforts, emphasising product innovation that will enable integration with more industrial sensors and software platforms to ensure superior data collection reliability for customers operating in mission-critical industries.
Another strategy for the company will be to enter other asset-heavy industries such as oil & gas, energy, and power infrastructure, where data-driven risk management is at the forefront of operations.
“Most existing solutions for industrial monitoring are manual, costly, and unreliable. This has resulted in a massive and challenging problem: lack of visibility, leading to poor worker safety and even loss of lives. Ackcio is one of the very few companies in the world that addresses the issue by providing a real-time, wireless monitoring solution for sensors in harsh environments. We are proud to have Ackcio join our family of startups and continue their growth journey with us,” says Maxim Shkvaruk, Investment Director at Atlas Ventures.
Founded in 2016 by Dr Nimantha Baranasuriya and Dr Mobashir Mohammad, Ackcio delivers cutting-edge, long-range, mesh-based wireless monitoring solutions to industries including construction, infrastructure, rail, and mining. Built on years of research in wireless networks, Ackcio’s technology helps contractors monitor geotechnical projects remotely in real-time and enables companies to increase operational efficiency, reduce costs, improve worker safety, and comply with local regulatory requirements.
Ackcio’s technology is ideal for monitoring above ground and underground sites in construction, railway, infrastructure, mines, and tunnels. Its suite of products ensures smooth project operations, promising reliability of monitoring, management of operational risks, ensuring productivity and adherence to safety measures in place.
Ackcio is currently providing its devices to large-scale, major infrastructure development projects in Singapore, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The company will be starting similar, extensive deployments across the region in the next few months. With the new funding, Ackcio will focus on significantly expanding the Engineering and Operations teams to support customers in a wide range of industries.