Embracing Internet of Things (IoT) technology for the office is not easy, especially on an enterprise scale. Businesses need to worry about managing IoT devices and also building the infrastructure needed to keep those devices connected and operational.
To make it easier, five former coworkers—Pasi Leipälä, Teemu Vaattovaara, Jyrki Okkonen, Ville Ylläsjarvi, and Toni Leinonen—founded Haltiana startup that offers a portfolio of sensors, cellular gateways, device management dashboards, and software to help businesses orchestrate IoT in the workplace.
As a sign that investors are interested in the idea, Haltian recently closed a €22 million (~$24 million) funding round led by Mandatum Asset Management Growth Equity with participation from Varma, Tesi, Ventic and Invent. Bringing the company’s total funding to date to €40 million (~$43.7 million), Haltian CEO Leipälä says it will go towards supporting international expansion in Central Europe and North America as well as well as Haltian’s recruitment efforts.
Kitty Laine, investment manager at Mandatum Asset Management, said by email: “We were drawn to Haltian because they are able to digitize the built environment and create savings for their clients from data that was not available before. Its cloud-connected smart sensors and world-class research and development have received excellent feedback from discerning US-based customers, and we are excited to see Haltian products gain traction in international markets.”
The IoT market has proven resilient to the ups and downs of the broader technology space, with data from Crunchbase showing that the average amount of capital raised by IoT startups in 2022 hit the highest point in more than a decade.
Unsurprisingly, Haltian isn’t the only startup vying for a piece of the substantial venture capital pie. Recently, a startup called memory failure raised $24 million for its platform designed to help businesses manage their growing fleets of IoT devices. Elsewhere, Fleet has secured tens of millions of dollars for its device management software. There’s also waitwhich raised $30 million in May 2021 to grow its IoT DevOps platform.
What sets Haltian apart, says Leipälä, the CEO, is the comprehensiveness of its product offering. Leipälä and the other Haltian co-founders previously worked at Nokia in one of the company’s smartphone divisions, where the idea for Haltian came from.
“In the beginning, Haltian focused on providing premium engineering services to other companies. Our own IoT products started development after a couple of years, with revenue earned from engineering services,” Leipälä told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Haltian is one of the few companies capable of providing a full-stack IoT solution. We can customize any . . . item according to customer requirements.
Through a combination of sensors and artificial intelligence algorithms, Haltian’s platform can count the number of people in an office or building or track things like humidity and CO2 levels. You can also monitor light usage, leaks, and temperature drops, as well as detect when your paper, towel, and soap dispensers are running low.
There is a lot of sensitive data that Haltian collects. But Leipälä claims that he is anonymous and stored in a private cloud. (In the absence of a look at the customer service agreement, we’ll have to take his word for it.)
“For Haltian, scalability is not just about how many devices can be connected to a single gateway, but also how thousands of deployment locations can be logistically served, as well as how easy and fast installation can be done, onboarding and lifecycle management,” he said. aggregate.
One factor playing in Haltian’s favor is the growing interest in IoT among companies. in a 2021 survey Per Omdia, the London-based consultancy, 90% of organizations said they considered IoT to be central to their digital transformation plans or implemented in multiple areas of their organization. A seperation report by Gartner, published a year earlier, estimated that 47% of organizations plan to increase their investments in IoT, with the goal of reducing costs and bolstering their overall digital transformation efforts.
Interestingly, around 75% of Haltian’s revenue comes from sales of its IoT devices, says Leipälä.
“We have grown annually at a rate of almost 50% for the last three years, reaching revenues of around 20 million euros (~$21.85 million) last year,” Leipälä said. “Since the pandemic, there has been an increased focus on making office layouts align with company cultures, accompanied by supporting technologies, for example, IoT solutions. At the same time, IoT sensor solutions have become more affordable, cost-effective, and easy to implement.”
Capitalizing on the upward trend, Haltian recently expanded into the US and Amsterdam, opening offices in California and the Netherlands. So far, it has raised a total of 40 million euros (~$43.71 million) and plans to increase its employee base from 145 people to around 170 by the end of the year.
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