Veniam Inc’s U.S. Success Story
How this SMB from Portugal in the ICT industry made it in the U.S.A
Country Of Origin Portugal
U.S. HQ. Mountain View, California, USA
Industry ICT
Year Founded 2012
Number Of Employees Over 50
Annual revenue $5 million - Estimated as at 2017
About Veniam Inc
Veniam is a Portuguese company that focuses on building large WiFi mesh networks in moving vehicles like city buses or taxis. Generally, the company equips vehicles with wireless hotspots to create a mesh that builds sensors to expand wireless coverage. The company offers vehicle-to-vehicle as well as vehicle-to-infrastructure solutions. That setup supports a wide range of fleet services and smart city applications. By turning vehicles into Wi-Fi hotspots, Veniam creates a city-scale vehicular network that expands wireless coverage.
Besides, Veniam’s cloud-based managed services enable private enterprises and cities to acquire, analyze, and act upon valuable onboard data. The data is very essential in improving safety, security, and operational efficiency. Currently, the company is operating the world’s largest live vehicle network deployment in the world. It is providing these services through a fleet of hundreds of vehicles in Portugal, USA, and Singapore.
The USA Expansion
The dream of expanding to the USA started with 2015 and was in the pipeline for almost the whole of 2016. Looking for the right base to set up the company was one of the key things. The other key thing was looking for an investor who were ready to collaborate with the company in the expansion the US. First, the company management decided to have two major bases in the US. One was set up in Mountain View, California while the other one is in New York. Obviously, this would take up a lot of money to get started.
In February 2018, Yamaha Motor Limited announced that it has made an investment of 2 million US dollars into the Silicon Valley Startup Company. Most notably, this investment represents the first opportunity explored by the subsidiary for new business development, the Yamaha Motor Ventures & Laboratory Silicon Valley Inc. (YMVSV). The YMVSV began operations in Silicon Valley in August 2015.
Through the investment in Veniam, Yamaha Motor will link to the planning and development of new technologies, products, and services associated with ‘connected mobility. Furthermore, Yamaha Motor will continue to take initiatives through YMVSV that can lead to new business model development.
In the recent past, the company has managed to raise more than $30M in venture capital for operations and expansion in various countries. That has been with help from top Venture capital as well as Verizon, Cisco, Liberty Global, Yamaha Motors and Orange.
In 2016, the company raised around $22 million led by Verizon Ventures. The fundraising included new investors such as Cisco Investments, Orange Digital Ventures, and Yamaha Motor Ventures. Additionally, existing investors Cane Investments, True Ventures, and Union Square Ventures also participated. All this was aimed to settle the company’s subsidiary offices into their existing and operational status.
Veniam will use the new money on two expansion fronts. These are to expand its platform to deliver managed services and to grow its teams in Silicon Valley, Porto, and Singapore. The expansion will be aimed at deployed urban fleets, factories, airports and other places where vehicles move people and goods.
Presently, Veniam operates a citywide vehicular mesh network in the US. That consists of more than 200 vehicles, including fleets of buses and taxis connected via the company’s NetRider mesh networking devices. The company projects that under its growth plan, these numbers will soon increase.
Smart Cities in the USA
There has been a rapid growth of the company’s activities in the US. That has made it possible for public and private fleets to collect vast amounts of data form vehicles quickly and cheaply. It has also made it possible for more smart cities to collect urban data from vehicles and fixed city sensors. With the connection of many vehicles, the company is striving to achieve more smart cities this year. Smart cities will have full connectivity.
According to Joao Barros, founder, and CEO of Veniam, the company is focused on transitioning from mobile Wi-Fi hotspots to autonomous vehicles. Soon, cities in the USA will be a convergence of the internet of things (IoT). In the company’s expansion plan, autonomous vehicles will be part of the change to the urban mobility systems. Autonomous vehicles will be able to deploy safety applications, run over-the-air software updates, and ensure secure communications between vehicles and connected infrastructure.
The growth of the company will see its revenue rise by more than at least 20% this year alone. As of 2017, the estimated annual revenue was about $5 million. Such a revenue will enable the company to invest more in enhancing connectivity to have more smart cities.