HiSky has deployed commercial services via satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) in areas including North America, Israel, West Europe, South Africa, the UAE and India.
ST Engineering has announced that its venture capital arm, ST Engineering Ventures Pte Ltd, led a US$30m Series A round in Israeli satellite IoT company hiSky, with participation from Strategic Development Fund (SDF), the investment arm of UAE-based Tawazun Holding, and hiSkys existing shareholders.
The investment in hiSky enables ST Engineerings satellite communications business, ST Engineering iDirect, to leverage the formers IoT network. This comprises the Smartellite satellite terminals and cloud-based network management system (NMS), which are complementary and integrated into existing ST Engineering iDirects hub stations and can be quickly deployed in current ST Engineering iDirect satellite networks.
HiSky has created its own low-cost and easy to install Smartellite satellite terminals that can transmit and receive IoT/Machine-to-Machine data. This eliminates the need to build an IoT infrastructure from scratch, which significantly reduces the cost of market entry.
Furthermore, its cloud-based NMS provides end users with an overview of the status of their terminals in the field to enhance the ease of operability of the overall IoT network. These terminals are designed to meet the requirements of LEO satellites, which are advanced new satellites that will be launched in the next decade, to buffer customers with a future-proofed solution that will evolve with their connectivity demands.
Low Ka Hoe, President, Satellite Communications at ST Engineering, said: “Analysts forecast that the satellite IoT market growth will total $1.1bn in revenue by 2027. Therefore, enabling our customers growth with an effective IoT solution is key to our strategy. This investment allows us to jointly offer hiSkys innovative and robust IoT satellite terminals with ST Engineering iDirects extensive hub and network management solutions, providing our customers with a validated, future-oriented IoT solution that leverages their existing infrastructure. The flexible service enablement options will help to reduce our customers upfront costs and minimise operational complexities associated with building and launching their own IoT solutions, thereby speeding their time to market.
Shahar Kravitz, Co-founder and CEO of hiSky, added: hiSky is both proud and delighted to welcome ST Engineering Ventures and SDF as investors. ST Engineering iDirect has been a strategic partner of hiSky for two years and we see their investment in hiSky as a natural step towards continued, rapid growth in our satellite IoT solutions across all verticals and industries. We have no doubt that hiSkys satellite IoT technology, combined with ST Engineering iDirects capabilities, will bring great value to customers in reducing their costs and shortening their time to market. We thank our new investment partners for this vote of confidence in our technology, vision and business plans.
With offices in Singapore, San Francisco, US, and Tel Aviv, Israel, ST Engineerings Corporate Venture Capital unit scouts for and invests in technology start-ups in high growth areas such as robotics, autonomous technology, data analytics, cybersecurity, IoT, Cloud, Connectivity and other emerging technologies.
