Deal focus: Igloohome puts smart home tech to work

Singapore-based smart products developer Igloohome thinks corporate security is long overdue an upgrade – and its internet-enabled keyless access systems are the perfect way to pull enterprise clients into the future.

"On the small scale, smart access is useful for reducing costs and streamlining processes. But when you extrapolate it to a wider level, its real value becomes more evident," says Yinglan Tan, CEO and founding managing partner at Insignia Venture Partners. "Collecting data on who's been where and at what time can help complete audit trails, trace movements, ease congestion, and improve productivity."

Capturing this enterprise opportunity is the goal of Iglooworks, the enterprise initiative for which Igloohome recently raised a $15 million round of funding co-led by Insignia, Wavemaker Partners, and Seeds Capital. The company hopes to replicate its success in the home market with customers in the corporate and urban planning sectors.

Founded in 2015, Igloohome is already present in 100 countries worldwide, thanks in part to partnerships with travel sites Airbnb, HomeAway, and Booking.com that have put its signature smart locks in the homes of short-term renters. Guests can use the company's products without internet access thanks to a secure cloud service that generates one-time access codes.

When it comes to targeting enterprise and public sector customers, Iglooworks is mindful that their needs are fundamentally different to those of homeowners. "For consumers, you have to balance convenience and security, but for enterprise customers, security and scalability are the primary concerns," Tan says. "You may have five to 10 locks in a house, but in a business there could be thousands of locks, and a security breach would be disastrous."

The Iglooworks concept is scaled up from the consumer proposition in every way, from enterprise-grade hardware such as door locks, deadbolts, and padlocks with a wider range of networking options, to a software-based dashboard that enables monitoring of every lock on a property.

Iglooworks has already signed several corporate customers: Singtel, Chow's former employer, is working with the company on a perimeter security solution that could require up to 100,000 locks, and a major trucking company is in discussions to order 50,000 smart padlocks for its vehicles. These high-profile partnerships are expected to position Igloohome for strong growth moving forward.

"The company's in a very nice spot: on the consumer side, it's a high-end product, and consumers with valuable assets to protect will always optimize on quality rather than cost," says Tan. "For the enterprise solution, I think the customers already lined up speak for themselves. Having high-quality, scalable products with security at the level that enterprise needs and the ability to gather data around it is going to be a very important differentiator."   

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Technology
• Real estate
• Early-stage
• Singapore
• Insignia Venture Partners
• Venture
• Wavemaker Partners