Continue to strengthen the ability to extract value for IoT data.
Obtained, On October 16, 2019, LoraWAN Technology Provider in China’s Internet of Things, Loh Wai Unlimited Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Huilian Unlimited”) in Beijing and China Communications Services Co., Ltd. ( The following is referred to as China Unicom) to hold strategic cooperation and investment signing ceremony, and to announce Huilian Unlimited C-round financing information, with financing amounting to several hundred million yuan. This round of financing was led by Tongfu Capital Holdings Co., Ltd., defiance of technology, Bojiang Capital and investment, and the old shareholder Huachuang Capital continued to follow. This round of funds will be mainly used for core product development and market channel expansion.
Huilian Unlimited is a company that continues to report, mainly providing customers in the security, real estate, education and other industries, providing a wide-area Internet of Things solution with LoRa as its core. The core communication products include the establishment of city-level and regional-level LPWAN. A series of network components (transceiver nodes, transceiver gateways, ad hoc network protocol stacks, and data exchange). In the field of LPWAN technology, Huilian Unlimited has accumulated a large number of product experience and case experience, and has now opened up the entire industry chain from “supply chain” to “cloud service” to “LPWAN industry resource integration”.
There were consecutive B rounds, B+ round financing, a total of 380 million yuan, investors including Huachuang Capital, IDG Capital, China Light and Power Valley, Hanergy Investment Group and other well-known institutions .
Huilian Infinity said that in the future, in terms of platform construction, Huilian will establish a “connection + platform + intelligence” trinity IoT architecture and deepen high-value data services. It will gradually upgrade from data collection to data analysis and data intelligence capabilities, and cooperate with well-known AI companies such as Vision Technology to increase AI investment and strengthen the value extraction capability of IoT data.
About investment logic:
For this round of financing, Liang Shiping, deputy general manager of China Communications Services Co., Ltd. said: Huilian’s unlimited product system can fill the gap in the service technology product segment, and Huilian has unlimited solutions, especially The flexible ‘meta-scenario’ and ‘micro-scene’ can cope with the fragmented nature of the IoT market. At the same time, Huilian Infinite PaaS platform has multi-protocol access networking solutions, including LoRa/LoRaWAN, NB-loT, cable, etc. It is suitable for various deployment environments and construction requirements, providing massive sensor access and hardware for smart city construction. deviceThe data access service is convenient for enterprises and institutions to quickly implant data collection nodes on demand. Through the IoT cloud platform service component, the terminal customers are provided with a quick combination based on operational service formation to construct a personalized IoT application platform. Huilian has a wealth of partners and has strong synergy in the smart city field. It is also a rare capability in the LPWAN field.
The following is an infinite report on Huilian in January this year (excerpt):
Recently, Dr. Hu Wei, the chairman of Huilian Infinity, interviewed the company’s unlimited business model, latest developments, future plans, views on mainstream LPWAN technology, and industry status.
The reason that Huilian is doing infinitely is to cooperate with the corresponding sensor configuration in different application scenarios to help customers solve different types of information collection, transmission and integration problems. Taking the smart and safe community as an example, Huilian Unlimited collects information such as water and electricity meters, access control, and manhole cover in the community by matching different sensors and transmits them to the IoT Gateway. The IoT gateway transmits the information collected by the sensors in the coverage to the IoT platform, and the IoT platform aggregates and manages the data returned by the multiple IoT gateways. Throughout the process, Huilian has provided a complete set of services from the previous network construction planning, project implementation to the later network adaptation and maintenance.
In the field of landing, security (smart community, park), real estate (long-rent apartment, public rental housing), education (colleges, primary and secondary schools) are the core of Huilian Unlimited.
Talking about the choice logic of landing, Hu Wei told that the characteristics of these fields are that there is a certain amount of space to gather, suitable for a private network, which is the advantage of LoRa. Of course, different projects will have different network attributes. For example, in some cases, the security field will require the establishment of a private network, while the real estate and education fields do not have such a rigid requirement and can be more flexibly configured. In addition, the founding team and shareholders also have resource advantages in these areas.
LoRa and NB-IoT are the two core technology solutions in the domestic LPWAN field. Under the background of operators and national policies to promote NB-IoT, why does Huilian choose LoRa as its core solution?
Hu Wei believes that LPWAN is still in its early stages and has not yet reached a level of fierce competition, LoRa andNB-IoT does not conflict, and can each play an advantage to jointly promote the LPWAN market. For example, where the NB-IoT signal is not covered, the place where the private network needs to be built can only be built with LoRa. In addition, because LoRa has a longer commercial life and more mature sensors and protocols, the advantages of LoRa will gradually become prominent in two years. Huilian Unlimited does not rule out the possibility of cooperation with NB-IoT in the future. Its platform already has the ability to carry NB-IoT, which can better meet customer needs.
In the profit model, one is a one-time charging model for hardware sales and finished product delivery, and the other is hardware free, and the data service fee model is charged annually. In the future, Huilian will continue to increase the proportion of data service models and obtain a stable and stable source of income. In terms of revenue, Huilian has maintained an annual growth rate of 2 times.
Does LPWAN build a network, is there a problem of high customization and difficult scale replication?
Hu Wei told that the largest customer customization needs are often in the upper application system, and Huilian Unlimited solves the problem from the sensor hardware to the data platform level. The customization requirements of the application software level will be solved by the software integrator. In each project, Huilian’s infinite customization work is mainly the addition of sensors, parameter adjustment, etc. Currently, the customization ratio accounts for about 20%. With more and more adaptive sensors, the customization ratio will continue to decrease. .
Reparation, security, education, and real estate are relatively standardized. For example, security, education, and vertical management systems, from department to office, bureau, etc., Huilian unlimitedly builds industry standards with customers, and then Promote replication throughout the country.
In the actual project, Huilian Unlimited will send project management personnel to coordinate, and the project implementation will be completed by partners such as integrators, which also makes Huilian unlimited promotion and copying relatively lighter.
Talking about Huilian’s unlimited core competitive advantages and barriers, Hu Wei believes that the first is the industry know-how, such as how to ensure RF and signal quality through technical customization, which can guarantee delivery quality and schedule. In the years of service exploration, Huilian Infinity has formed a full-stack product of LoRaWan networking, as well as a complete service system for network construction, planning and maintenance. At the same time, it has found its own strengths and accumulated heavyweight partners and customers, which also brings a first-mover advantage (high customer migration costs).
In the future, Huilian Unlimited will continue to deepen its strengths in existing industries, while expanding its partners from upstream sensors to downstream integrators to expand new industries. In terms of technology, we will jointly develop new low-power sensors with universities to further leverage the advantages of LPWAN.