In the fast emerging Industrial IoT sector, the average investment ticket size at the Series A stage witnessed a rise, global funding slowdown notwithstanding. This is perhaps an indicator of the potential the sector holds, even as newer innovative ventures in this space continue to get investor-backing in their early stages.
Average investment ticket size at the seed stage was almost stagnant year-on-year while investment at the Series B stage stood at $11.2M. Following an all-time best funding year for the sector in 2015 ($863M in 171 rounds), 2016 saw muted investment activity with over $458M secured in 87 rounds, which is still commendable factoring the funding environment. Consequently, there was also a decline in total funding across all stages; seed, early and late.
By company formation, over 374 companies emerged in this space over the last three years, indicating a positive trend for this sector, going forward. The sector is still in its nascent stages and yet to peak, even as newer use cases and applications for this technology are emerging by the day.
Healthcare (Sigforx, Sotera Wireless) and smart buildings (View Dynamic Glass, GridPoint) emerged as the top funded business models in 2016.
The largest upcoming sectors in this space include healthcare-medical adherence (Proteus Digital Health), fleet management (SmartDrive) and analytics (OSIsoft). By company formation, agriculture farm monitoring & management (The Climate Corporation), retail analytics (RetailNext) and companies offering energy efficiency solutions to buildings (View Dynamic Glass) emerged as the hotbeds of activity.
Likewise, other niches that display potential as future upcoming sectors include companies agriculture analytics, logistics, manufacturing workforce wearables and machine monitoring.
Some of the most notable funding rounds for the year were bagged by California-based Proteus Digital Health ($50M) and View Dynamic Glass ($44M), Canada-based Farmers Edge ($41M) and London-based Condeco ($30M). The top 10 investment rounds by ticket size accounted for 64% of the total funding that went year-to-date in this sector.
NEA (GridPoint, UpTake) Khosla Ventures (View Dynamic Glass, Tule) Plug and Play Tech Center (Timeli,Retailigence), Intel Capital (Enlighted, Sotera Wireless) and KPCB (Telogis, OSIsoft) were the top investors in this sector.
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