Japan's Sparx leads $50m round for Singapore IoT start-up

Singapore-listed GK Goh Holdings and local VC firm Optimal Investments also participated in the latest tranche. Sparx led the initial USD 25m Series B investment last year with support GK Goh, Taiwan’s CDIB Capital, and Thailand’s Top Ventures.

UnaBiz is a specialist in “massive” IoT, a domain that involves connecting high volumes of endpoints with minimal data requirements often in remote locations with low power access. Use cases include smart homes, smart farms, and fleet management systems.

The company focuses on utilities, logistics, security, and building management applications. Its core technology, developed by France’s Sigfox, connects more than 10m sensors for 1,500 B2B customers on the global network called 0G. The 0G system is said to serve more than 70 operators globally.

UnaBiz has about 240 staff with sales offices in Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, and Rotterdam. There are R&D centres in Taipei and France. The company, founded in 2016, raised a USD 10m Series A in 2018 featuring Japan’s Global Brain and KDDI Corporation, as well as Taiwan’s Shin Kong Group, and French energy technology company Energie.

"UnaBiz’s acquisition of the 0G technology significantly enhances and cements the group's position as the global leader of massive IoT,” Shuhei Abe, president and CEO of Sparx, said in a statement.

“As the technology owner of the most energy-efficient LPWAN [low-power wide-area network] technology available on the market, UnaBiz is in a prime position to champion the convergence of massive IoT communication technologies – from 0G to 5G – to help enterprises achieve their digitalisation and sustainability goals.”

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