STOCKHOLM, July 8, 2020 — Electrolux said today it will report a smaller loss for the second quarter of 2020 than previously anticipated, with operating income estimated to be approximately SEK -100 million (1,219). This was driven by sales growth in June and successful cost mitigation actions. In the Q1 interim report published on May 7, 2020, Electrolux communicated that it expected a “significant” loss in the second quarter.
Net sales in the second quarter are estimated to be approximately SEK 23.5 billion (29.2), a decrease of 17% organically. In June, however, the Group had an organic sales growth of 3%, year-over-year. All figures in this press release are preliminary and unaudited, and the final report for the second quarter of 2020 will be published on July 17, 2020 at about 0800 CET.
In April, demand and production in several of Electrolux main markets were severely impacted by the strict countermeasures initiated by local authorities to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Electrolux Group sales in the month were down by approximately 30%.
As restrictions gradually have been lifted, markets primarily in Europe have developed more positively than expected in the latter part of the quarter. In addition, the APAC & MEA business area has been well positioned with its products; particularly in Australia, contributing to earnings during the quarter.
The strong execution on cost mitigation actions, including furloughs for employees in several markets and significantly reduced discretionary spending, has resulted in a more favorable net cost efficiency in the second quarter than previously anticipated.
Electrolux will not make any further comments until the second quarter interim report has been published.
CONTACT:
For further information, please contact:
Sophie Arnius, Head of Investor Relations, +46-70-590-80-72
Daniel Frykholm, Electrolux Press Hotline, +46-8-657-65-07.
This is information that AB Electrolux is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 2000 CET on July 7, 2020
BEIJING, July 8, 2020 — Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN) (“Renren” or the “Company”), which operates a leading premium used auto business in China through its subsidiary Kaixin Auto Holdings (NASDAQ: KXIN) (“Kaixin”) as well as several U.S.-based SaaS businesses, today announced the filing of its annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2019 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). The annual report was filed with the SEC on July 7, 2020.
The Company received a notice from NYSE Regulation on July 1, 2020 indicating that the Company was not in compliance with Section 802.01E of the NYSE Listed Company Manual as a result of its failure to timely file its annual report with the SEC.
The Company was not able to file the annual report by its due date primarily due to (i) the impact of the outbreak of COVID-19, as set forth in the Form 6-K furnished to the SEC on April 28, 2020, (ii) the internal review to complete its financial data, as set forth in the Form 12b-25 submitted to the SEC on June 12, 2020, and (iii) additional time required after June 29, 2020 to prepare its 2019 financial statements and annual report.
The annual report on Form 20-F, which contains the Company’s audited consolidated financial statements, can be accessed on the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov as well as through the investor relations section of the Company’s website at http://www.renren-inc.com. Holders of the Company’s securities may request a hard copy of the Company’s annual report free of charge by contacting the Investor Relations department by mail at:
Renren Inc. Investor Relations Department 5/F, North Wing 18 Jiuxianqiao Middle Road, Chaoyang District Beijing 100016 People’s Republic of China
About Renren Inc.
Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN) operates a leading premium used auto business in China through its subsidiary Kaixin Auto Holdings (NASDAQ: KXIN) as well as several US-based SaaS business. Renren’s ADSs, each currently representing forty-five (45) Class A ordinary shares of the Company, are traded on NYSE under the symbol “RENN”.
For investor and media inquiries please contact:
Investor Relations Department Renren Inc. Tel: (86 10) 8448 1818 ext. 1300 Email: ir@renren-inc.com
ATLANTA, LONDON, BRUSSELS, and ROTTERDAM, Netherlands, July 7, 2020 — Anywhere365, the leading provider for Enterprise Dialogue Management and a pioneer in customer service technology for Microsoft Teams, acquires PeterConnects, a provider of advanced communications software solutions for the unified collaboration platforms of Microsoft and Cisco, including the cloud offerings of Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex Calling and Broadworks. PeterConnects is Anywhere365’s third acquisition in the last year and leverages the €60 million minority investment received from growth capital firm Bregal Milestone.
The acquisition accelerates the growth of the leading global omnichannel communications software provider, allowing Anywhere365 to further expand its Microsoft-centric Contact Center and Enterprise Dialogue Management offering. PeterConnects’ rich product portfolio delivers market leading Receptionist and Attendant Console functionalities to Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex Teams and Broadworks.
Lucas de Clercq, the current CEO of PeterConnects, will join Anywhere365 as a Product Director of the newly established Reception and Attendant Productivity division, directly reporting to Gijs Geurts, Founder and CEO of Anywhere365.
“This combination will strengthen our position in the global market for omnichannel communications software and will allow us to better serve our joint customer base of over 2500 enterprise clients, in 60+ countries, including dozens of Fortune Global 500 corporations. Being part of the Anywhere365 platform will also create significant opportunities for our partner ecosystem and all of our employees, and we look forward to working with the Anywhere365 team,” says Lucas de Clercq.
PeterConnects’ international team will immediately join the Anywhere365 Group and strengthen its existing sales, product development and support coverage. Anywhere365 will expand its country specific business units, with local presence in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and Singapore.
“We have been impressed by PeterConnects’ growth trajectory, the quality of its product suite and their focus on customer service, which we feel are unique and highly complementary to our own. With a combined offering spanning a complete suite of cloud contact center solutions, backoffice integrations and add-ons for the leading unified communications environments, we are working towards our ambition of transitioning the world away from legacy on-premises systems to achieve significant efficiencies in cloud contact center and reception attendant operations. Digital transformation is accelerating at a record pace and our success proves that customers value the reduction of unnecessary dialogues that Anywhere365 brings. We look forward to welcoming the PeterConnects team and further strengthening our global footprint,” says Gijs Geurts, Founder and CEO of Anywhere365.
Anywhere365’s acquisition of PeterConnects will give enterprise businesses across the world the opportunity to gain a strong competitive advantage with Anywhere365’s Cloud Contact Center and Dialogue Management solutions. It will allow them to streamline their communications by taking advantage not only of their current channels, but of everything the cloud has to offer.
–Cloud-based services offer IT hassle-free hosted infrastructure and a choice of print management features–
BRNO, Czech Republic and DALLAS, July 7, 2020 — Y Soft, the leading enterprise workflow solutions provider, today announced YSoft SAFEQ Cloud(TM), a new family of cloud print management and hosted infrastructure services. YSoft SAFEQ Cloud is comprised of YSoft SAFEQ CloudPro(TM) and YSoft SAFEQ Breeze(TM). The new services remove the need for locally managed print infrastructure, like servers, and dramatically reduces the cost of providing and running robust print services–all delivered by the world’s preferred print management provider.
SAFEQ CloudPro offers robust print management features with a reserved infrastructure ideal for the enterprise. Additionally, SAFEQ CloudPro is offered with a choice of resiliency levels, Core, Ultra, and Elite, each providing increasingly higher resiliency and performance. A Custom level further enables Y Soft to meet the special infrastructure requirements on an individual customer basis, including hosting using a customer’s/partner’s own cloud provider. SAFEQ CloudPro can be used with or without a Y Soft Edge device.
SAFEQ Breeze is designed for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) that do not have or do not want to hire IT staff to manage their print services. With core print management features and a shared hosted infrastructure, SAFEQ Breeze can also be used with or without a Y Soft Edge device.
Both SAFEQ CloudPro and SAFEQ Breeze securely and effortlessly manage an organization’s print infrastructure. The Y Soft Edge device offers businesses additional document security as job processing is done within the business’ own private and secure network, and only metadata travels securely to the cloud. It is also well suited for remote locations with low bandwidth or latency issues.
“Companies of every size are leveraging the cloud to help lower IT costs, reduce IT burden, and speed up their digital transformation initiatives,” said Robert Palmer, research vice president, IDC Imaging, Printing, and Document Solutions. “However, each company has different requirements, and the YSoft SAFEQ Cloud family offers businesses the versatility and flexibility needed to assist organizations no matter where they are on their cloud journey.”
“With YSoft SAFEQ CloudPro and YSoft SAFEQ Breeze, we are delivering on our mission to help businesses run smarter,” said Vaclav Muchna, Y Soft CEO and co-founder. “We significantly invested in our product development to introduce a native cloud solution that efficiently scales in the cloud as businesses’ needs grow. We will continue to add to our cloud family of services and functionalities to meet the needs of our partners and customers. Y Soft’s future is firmly rooted in the cloud,” he added.
YSoft SAFEQ Cloud family availability Both new cloud-based services are typically less expensive than on-premise solutions and come with a budget-friendly monthly or annual subscription. The YSoft SAFEQ Cloud family of services are hosted on Microsoft® Azure and is managed by Y Soft. Updates, maintenance, and a premium service level are included.
SAFEQ Breeze with the Y Soft Edge Device is now available as a customer beta program. Both SAFEQ Breeze (Edge enabled and non-Edge) and YSoft SAFEQ CloudPro will be generally available in Fall 2020.
Y Soft develops intelligent Digital Transformation office solutions for enterprise, SMB, and Education that empower employees to be more productive and creative. Our YSoft SAFEQ® workflow solutions platform in the cloud or on-premise enables businesses to manage, optimize and secure their print and digital processes and workflows. Our 3D print solutions are focused in the Education sector where they provide unique ease of use and safety benefits, while utilizing YSoft SAFEQ software for seamless 3D print management.
Founded in 2000, the company is headquartered in Brno, Czech Republic, with offices in North and Latin America, Europe and Middle East/Africa (EMEA) and the Asia Pacific region (APAC). For more information, please visit www.ysoft.com.
Y Soft, YSoft SAFEQ, YSoft SAFEQ Cloud, YSoft SAFEQ Breeze and YSoft SAFEQ CloudPro are trademarks or registered trademarks of Y Soft Corporation a.s. in the European Union and other countries. All other names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
Media contacts:
Global: Steven Knuff Global PR and Analyst Relations steven.knuff@ysoft.com +1 512 810-3207
We are back after a two week hiatus. We are finally repopulating the office after a few months under quarantine. This week’s show is quite big though. We are taking a deeper stab and discussion about what happened between HUAWEI, ZTE, and FCC last week. FCC has finally banned HUAWEI and ZTE from being used by any American contractors using the federal subsidy for all communication devices. This is a huge problem for us who are quite big fans of their smartphones with Google Play Services. This announcement sets them back on the progress toward having Google Play Services in their newer devices too.
We saw a few ASUS notebooks being launched starting with ASUS’ ExpertBook B9 notebook PC made for business. We also see the VivoBooK S launched last week. We reviewed it of course, and you can find the link here. Then we got to see the soon coming ASUS ZenBook 13 and 14 flagship notebook PCs.
We also saw OnePlus launching a brand new smartphone in the OnePlus Nord. The OnePlus Nord is OnePlus’ attempt to hit back into the budget smartphone market. Everything about it screams mid-range too, which makes sense with its price. So, should you still get a HUAWEI device? Listen on and see what we think! Let us know what you think too in the comments below!
LISHUI, China, July 7, 2020 — Farmmi, Inc. (“Farmmi” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ: FAMI), an agriculture products supplier in China, today announced it has been expanding the use of online and cloud-based sales and marketing platforms to drive growth in sales of its Shiitake mushrooms, Mu Er mushrooms, other edible fungi and agricultural products. The Company has attended various online fairs and sales events, such as the Cloud Canton Fair (the Canton Fair held online), the Cloud Live Sales Event held by the Economic and Commercial Bureau of Liandu District, Liandu District Fusion Media Center, and Liandu District Market Supervision Administration, and the 2020 Online Export Agricultural Products Fair held by the Zhejiang Export Agricultural Products Virtual Expo (Global Station). Farmmi also joined the government’s procurement cloud computing service platform The Company’s increased focus on strategically using online marketing tools and platforms is helping to drive sales with new customers and has resulted in multiple additional repeat orders in China, the U.S. and Israel, and other markets worldwide.
Ms. Yefang Zhang, Farmmi’s Chairwoman and CEO, commented, “With the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we quickly prioritized the health and safety of our employees and customers. Temporary business shut-downs, social distancing and the implementation of broader safety measures made traditional marketing based on large gatherings no longer practical. From there we made the strategic decision to upgrade and accelerate our use of digital technology and platforms, and our online and cloud-based sales and marketing efforts. Farmmi has fully embraced and supported the move online for important events like the newly renamed Cloud Canton Fair and the 2020 Online Export Agricultural Products Fair. These sales and marketing platforms are helping us to move additional products online, find new markets, develop new business opportunities, and inject new momentum to further promote the digital transformation of enterprises.”
Ms. Zhang continued, “We are working to take advantage of online trading, broaden online cooperation channels and increase sales, as we leverage our online, cloud and digital programs to transfer sales channels online through limited promotions, while implementing group purchase discounts and other online marketing programs, ranging from webcasts to intuitive 3D product presentations. We view this as a major driver of future economic growth. We are encouraged by the positive, broad customer support for the new technologies and Cloud-based apps, which allow the customers to communicate and make purchases more efficiently and conveniently, while enhancing their overall buying experience. Over the long-term, we remain committed to maintaining an integrated online and offline presence, innovating our business model, and achieving our fully upgraded digital transformation, as we build value for the Company and shareholders.”
About Farmmi, Inc.
Headquartered in Lishui, Zhejiang, Farmmi, Inc. (NASDAQ: FAMI), is a leading agricultural products supplier, processor and retailer of Shiitake mushrooms, Mu Er mushrooms, other edible fungi, and many other sought-after agricultural products. The Company’s Farmmi Liangpin Market serves as a global trading platform for Chinese geographical indication agricultural products and is one of the largest platforms for consumers to access locally sourced agricultural products. For further information about the Company, please visit: http://ir.farmmi.com.cn/.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical fact in this announcement are forward-looking statements, including the potential impact of COVID-19 on our business within and outside of China. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that the Company believes may affect its financial condition, results of operations, business strategy and financial needs. Investors can identify these forward-looking statements by words or phrases such as “may,” “will,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “aim,” “estimate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “potential,” “continue,” “is/are likely to” or other similar expressions. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent occurring events or circumstances, or changes in its expectations, except as may be required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure you that such expectations will turn out to be correct, and the Company cautions investors that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results.
In this week’s TechENT Download, we see a whole lot happening including things going back to normal when it comes to Malaysia with more measures being relaxed and the techENT team heading back to our offices.
ASUS has also been busy releasing many laptops including new additions to the ZenBook series as well as a new ExpertBook B9 which is powered by Intel’s vPro processors. The ASUS VivoBook S series also got 2 new entries bringing more colour and functionality.
Telcos in Malaysia are extending their 1GB of free data to everyone with no time limitations. Subscribers can redeem their 1GB via their respective apps.
HUAWEI and ZTE face more problems as the American Federal Communications Commission goes on the record saying that they pose a threat to national security and privacy. This new development comes after more than a year of sanction placed against the companies by the current U.S. Administration. The new move will be hurting HUAWEI and ZTE’s 5G business as more countries take the notion seriously. What does this mean for smartphones?
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“We live in a time of great change. Thanks to technology, the rate of change around us continues to accelerate,” said Jim Whitehurst, president of IBM. Although today’s banking landscape in Asia-Pacific is proving slow to change, the springboards that could redefine banking are quickly emerging.
One such springboard is regulators issuing digital banking licenses in the region. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, for example, gave out eight virtual banking licenses last year. Awardees include Ant SME Services (Hong Kong) Limited, Ping An OneConnect Company Limited, Tencent’s Infinium Limited, and Xiaomi’s Insight Fintech HK Limited. Depending on the country, the licenses would allow non-banking entities to conduct banking activities such as taking deposits from retail customers and giving out loans to businesses. Since such firms are not required to have physical branches, they are also called online-only, virtual, or neo-banks. Examples of virtual banks in the region that are already in operations include Tencent’s WeBank in China, and Kakao Bank in South Korea.
These new entrants, together with fintechs, have raised customers’ expectations of banking services. Recent research from independent research firm Forrester found that 77% of Asia-Pacific banking customers prefer to interact with their financial services providers on digital channels, especially in mobile-first countries such as Mainland China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Nearly three-quarters of them also believed that they should be able to accomplish any financial task on a mobile device.
As the incumbent banks in Asia-Pacific are finding ways to address those changes head-on, they also need to look at their IT infrastructure, which supports and enables their business models. This is because the IT infrastructure handles the most demanding compute transactions such as trading stocks, bonds, currencies, or derivatives, or allowing retail customers to make purchases using a smartphone app.
Simplifying IT to drive better business outcomes
Established banks today are running on core systems that are often inflexible, expensive to maintain, and difficult to integrate with customer channels. Moreover, while integration is necessary, it is not sufficient to be able to create the technology platform flexibility necessary to lower operating costs, adapt to changes quickly, and optimize customer engagement. To overcome these challenges, banks in Asia-Pacific are working to transform their often monolithic, rigid, legacy IT architecture to a more open architecture that provides the agility to deliver dynamic business needs. This enables them to:
Optimize operations by streamlining processes
Since a single customer record can have various finance-related transactions associated with it, banking systems based on application programming interfaces (APIs) can better service multiple activities associated with a single customer record. Banks can further improve operational efficiency by deploying an API integration tool, which connects externally facing APIs with the internal banking APIs and systems of record. It transforms and directs incoming API requests to the appropriate endpoint within the IT environment, allowing changes to the back-office without impacting customer engagement services.
Additionally, banks can leverage microservices to expose individual functions, facilitating new service implementation as well as existing service updates. A microservices-based architecture can help banks better integrate their services into their partners’ platforms to deliver more services to customers. Since microservices can be reused, they also flexibly support and maintain production services by removing single points of failure in end-to-end flows. To reap the full benefits from microservices, they should be coupled with containers, which enable the portability of decisioning systems, across hybrid cloud environments.
Consistently deliver good customer experience in a standardized way despite changes in the business
Banks were initially built based on the branch office model, and were later supported by call centers and digital channels. These changes call for the IT architecture to be enhanced so that IT can effectively support new business models. However, there might be cases where IT architects missed integrating IT enhancements or new channels with existing operations, leading to data silos.
This is where standards, which can be critical for processing within the back office, can help. They are able to provide a foundation for a uniform system blueprint that gathers more detailed and consistent customer data that can be more easily combined across different transactions and banking channels. Since banks do not have the luxury of shutting down operations to rebuild, applying consistent standards across the board helps to more easily modify processing while still running and maintaining established levels of customer support. API implementation and reuse from shared catalogs can help to enforce adherence to standards and accelerate delivery.
Support business agility through continuous delivery
As change is the only constant, banks need to be able to rapidly develop and modify servicing logic, business rules, and predictive models to adapt to changing customer demands, comply with new regulations, and respond to new competitive offerings. A modern, microservices-based architecture can help banks gain that agility by enabling them to adopt continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) so that they can build, deploy and manage apps quickly.
Open source will be key to transforming the back-office
As more banks are embarking on the modernization journey to simplify IT, they are harnessing open source solutions to support customer engagement applications and deliver delightful customer experiences. According to The 2020 State of Enterprise Open Source: A Red Hat Report, 93% of IT leaders from the financial services industry globally said enterprise open source is important to their organization, and cited IT infrastructure modernization as one of the top three use cases for the technology. Respondents cited top reasons for using enterprise open source as being able to gain access to latest innovations and achieve higher levels of security.
Thailand’s Kasikorn Bank (KBank) is one bank that has benefitted from enterprise open source. It tasked its tech arm, Kasikorn Business-Technology Group (KBTG), to update and optimize its IT infrastructure to ensure that its mobile banking app is feature-rich, user-friendly and reliable even as the user base grew. KTBG did so by deploying Red Hat’s open source solutions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP), Red Hat AMQ, and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
Coupling the tech deployment with DevOps and agile methodologies, KTBG achieved the speed and scale KBank needed such that it can now handle 5,000 transactions per second. The open, modern IT architecture also enabled KBank to easily connect with its business partners’ systems to deliver more features on its mobile banking app, and provided a responsive, reliable application environment that reduced application development time from one month to two weeks. All in all, the changes that are reshaping the financial services industry offer established banks in Asia-Pacific opportunities to adopt technology that can increase their competitiveness and agility. In response to this, banks in the region have enhanced many of their customer-facing front-end operations with digital solutions. However, the front-office experience only makes up a small part of the entire process. Most of the servicing happens on the back end, often using numerous manual touchpoints that are rarely exposed to customers. Having a digital banking platform built on enterprise open source can help banks simplify IT and break down barriers between the customer engagement and back-office teams. With a stable yet flexible platform that can scale and adapt, banks can deliver a streamlined and frictionless customer experience that meets their expectations, therefore cracking the code to becoming successful digital banks that can compete effectively with new entrants.
We live in unprecedented times where communities need to support each other to make sure that we all survive what has been a weird roller coaster of a year. One of the worst hit industries has been the food and beverage industry with restaurants losing humongous chunks of their dine-in revenue and paying even more in delivery commissions with delivery partners such as Grab and FoodPanda. Some have reportedly been asked to pay upwards of 20% of their order to these partners.
EatLokal is looking to change that reality by partnering with disruptor brands like MyGroser and Socar to help bolster and support the local restaurant industry. They are working with these services to bring down the cost of delivery for both the restaurants and consumers. In fact, the company is looking to charge only 10% commission on sale for their launch period to help businesses increase sales and get back on their feet. The reason behind the low commission? Simple, they believe that the bulk of the revenue earned through sales of food should stay with restaurants at this time.
While EatLokal is focusing on delivering better value for service to restaurant owners, they aren’t leaving the consumer behind. They are looking to deliver better value for money when it comes to getting the convenience of ordering food. EatLokal is looking to connect us with our favourite local eateries. From the corner store with that deliciously thirst quenching cendol to the savoury chicken rice shop in Bangsar, EatLokal is looking bridge the divide in this time of social distancing while providing a convenience to both patrons and restaurateurs.
“As consumers, we have all felt the pinch of rapid increases in the prices that we pay for food delivery. We know there is a better, fairer way for everyone involved – the restaurants who provide the food and their employees; the delivery teams who do the work of sending the food to consumers; and consumers themselves. EATLOKAL is a community focused effort disruptors from Malaysia’s digital landscape who aim to improve the quality of service, pricing and approach to food delivery services while supporting and protecting our local restaurants, cafes and other food outlets who are working hard to stay open for us,”
Stephen P Francis, CEO of EATLOKAL
EatLokal is teaming up with independent motorcycle delivery teams, private delivery operators and Socar to get the goodies delivered. Socar will be playing a vital role in mobilizing cars as a delivery option.
The service is available in early access on the Apple App Store, GooglePlay Store and also on the internet via their webiste EatLokal.com. They are serving areas across Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur, Bangsar, Damansara, Hartamas, Mont Kiara, Tropicana, Bandar Utama, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Sunway, Subang Jaya, USJ and their surrounding areas. EatLokal has already teamed up with favourite neighbourhood eateries such as YMT Healthy Vegetarian, W1 Dining & Cocktails, Concubine KL, Asian Rice Pot, The Locker & Loft and The Accidental Bakers. EatLokal is now limiting the delivery radius to a 5 km radius from the outlet. However, they are continually expanding.
“Our investment will help enable Hong Kong technologies to reduce the massive loss of life, environmental problems and financial burdens caused by wildfires”
HONG KONG, July 7, 2020 — A HK$6 million investment led by Hong Kong-based venture capital fund Beyond Ventures is enabling a Hong Kong company to help protect over 4 million hectares of forest around the world.
Robotics Cats is a global leader in detecting wildfires at an early stage and serves national parks, UNESCO World Heritage sites and private plantations with its InsightFD Early Wildfire Detection System. This is a network of InsightFD robots linked to the Insight Globe management platform in a typical wildfire control centre.
InsightFD robots constantly rotate and scan for visual and thermal signals of burning vegetation using sensors, while an image-detection system combined with an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm are able to detect wildfires within a distance of 15 kilometres.
The new Series A round funding from Beyond Ventures will be channelled into R&D, as well as sales and operational functions. It will also finance development of applications and a push into new markets in geographies as far flung as Australia, Spain, Greece, the US, Brazil and Chile.
Some of the cash will go into funding resources to support customers in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Portugal and Mexico, while enabling the company to build partnerships with private fire service contractors, woodland management service companies and telecommunications providers.
Robotics Cats CEO and Founder Andre Cheung said: “We are a team of nature lovers and techies passionate about applying the latest technologies to greatly reducing the devastating effect of wildfires. Our company is therefore thrilled to be partnering with a like-minded investor such as Beyond Ventures, which shares our devotion to promoting environment-protection technologies developed in Hong Kong.”
Locally-born Cheung explained how early wildfire detection and environmental monitoring solutions are crucial to preventing disasters such as Australia’s bushfires. Over a period of several months from mid-2019, “Black Summer” wildfires destroyed an estimated 18.6m hectares of bush and nearly 6,000 buildings. At least 34 people perished, along with what is reckoned to be 1 billion animals. If such bushfires could be detected during the early ignition stage, they could be controlled and extinguished far more effectively, thereby reducing damage to a significant degree.
Cheung added: “We were terribly saddened by this tragedy and will ramp up global adoption of our technologies to help make the world a safer place.”
He holds more than 20 years’ experience in international B2B sales and has served at director level to the benefit of Hong Kong and multinational organisations such as DYXnet, Cisco, EdgeCast and Verizon.
Lap Man, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Beyond Ventures, said: “Our investment in Robotics Cats represents a success story on several fronts. One is about bypassing the bottleneck effect on Hong Kong’s innovation ecosystem normally caused by the difficulty of commercialising technologies. But I am happy to see Robotics Cats demonstrating how Hong Kong-developed technologies can be successfully commercialised and deployed globally.”
He added: “Another success factor for us is the way Robotics Cats aligns with the Beyond Ventures mission to bring about positive impact on society.”
Highlighting the sheer magnitude of the positive impact Robotics Cats will have on the world, Lap Man explained how it will help protect more than 4 million hectares of forest – a land area 42 times larger than Hong Kong itself.
He said: “The AI-enabled wildfire detection solution developed by Robotics Cats provides an automated 24/7 monitoring system that vastly improves accuracy and response times – all to help reduce the massive loss of life, myriad environmental problems and financial burdens caused by wildfires globally.”
About Beyond Ventures
Beyond Ventures is a Hong Kong-based venture capital fund established by eGarden Ventures in partnership with locally-grown serial entrepreneurs in 2017. eGarden Ventures is a venture capital fund focused on technology, media and telecoms (TMT) and holds nearly 20 years investment track record in Mainland China. The fund is also supported by leading investment company, Hony Capital, which manages more than US$10 billion in assets.
Since 2018, Beyond Ventures has appointed Co-investment Partner to the Innovation and Technology Venture Fund (ITVF), which was formed to spur private investment in local innovation and technology (I&T) start-ups.
Adopting the slogan “From Hong Kong. For Hong Kong”, Beyond Ventures seeks to revitalise Hong Kong’s innovation ecosystem by bringing experienced venture and private equity funds together with successful entrepreneurs able to provide start-ups with mentoring support.
Beyond Ventures focuses on early stages investments on artificial intelligence, biotechnology, chips, consumer electronics and platform business. For more information about Beyond Ventures, please visit the official website at www.beyondventures.hk
About Robotics Cats
Robotics Cats Limited is a technology company headquartered in Hong Kong. It focuses on computer vision, AI, and robotics technologies. It develops and provides early wildfire detection and environmental monitoring solutions to international customers. Its solutions help national parks/forestry, wildfire services, world heritages, private plantations, and infrastructure companies around the world to mitigate wildfire risks and damages. For more information about Robotics Cats, please visit the official website at www.roboticscats.com
