20 December 2017:
Tendulkar backed Indian OEM and IoT brand Smartron India Pvt. Ltd has acquired a majority stake in home automation startup MiQasa Inc.
According to media reports, the Indian OEM has picked up a 60 percent stake for $1 million (₹6.4 crore) cash investment in MiQasa. The company is planning to spend another $1 million to help MiQasa with logistics, brand promotion, sales and distribution and customer care.
In a chat with VCCircle, Mahesh Lingareddy, Founder and Chairman of Smartron said, “This is not like any angel or VC investment. Our aim is to help MiQasa generate $100 million in revenue in the next five years and for this we will continue to invest in the company.”
Lingareddy added ,”We are looking to further invest in India, to set up a research and development facility, launch multiple products, and partner with different companies to develop products and devices across various IoT verticals under TronX”.
Smartron offers a connected platform TronX to its users. With the help of TronX smartphones or any electric device can be plugged into the system to access its predictive artificial intelligence. TronX will be launched in India in March 2018. And, MiQasa will be renamed as “TronX Things”.
Lingareddy said, “The funding vision of Smartron is to build an India based global brand in technology away from services and human trafficking kind of thing. We have built an ecosystem around TronX and over the next 2-3 years we want to build this into actual volume, revenue and profitability and that requires additional capital”.
Smartron is planning to release three new products in January – a smartphone, a computer which will be called as ‘tbook’ and a smart wearable. The company already makes smartphones. It has launched two models – tphone and srt phone. srt phone is named after cricket legend Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. He is also an investor in the company.
MiQasa was founded in 2015. It makes smart switches.
(Image – Digit)
