Your alarm, your indoor thermometer… You may be using Sigfox technology without knowing it in one of your connected objects. This very low speed Internet network, and therefore very low consumption, which operates via a grid of small antennas, was developed from Toulouse from 2010. For a long time, the start-up Sigfox was considered a “nugget” of French Tech. , a “unicorn” rushing headlong towards success. But, in fact, the company never reached financial equilibrium and the Covid-19 dealt it the final blow.
If its “zero G” technology remains operational in more than 11 million objects around the world, Sigfox no longer exists as a company. It should be called UnaBiz, from the name of the Singaporean company, which bought it a year ago, saving it from bankruptcy.
Little Thumb’s Surprise
This little Thumb from Asia – 80 employees at the time against 200 at Sigfox – was chosen at the expense of eight buyers with much more support, thanks to the support of employees and customers. The architect of this big surprise was Henri Bong, the Franco-Chinese boss of UnaBiz but above all a ghost. He was from 2014 to 2016, the only employee of Sigfox in Singapore, before deciding to strike out on his own. By freeing itself from the “protocol war” that Sigfox has never stopped waging with the LoRa in particular the other technology, American, available on the market of connected objects. “There is no best technology, says Henri Bong, there is the right technology for the right use cases”. When Sigfox sold antenna networks around the world to customers who had to invest even before knowing for what outlet, Henri Bong in Asia started from the connected object itself and proposed a solution among all those available to put it on point. That’s how he landed a deal for 850,000 smart gas meters in Japan. It is therefore the 220 Sigfox patents that he bought, and that he adds to his palette.
The “cycle paths” of the Internet
With success, according to the boss of UnaBiz, who speaks in dollars rather than euros. “Sigfox is not dead, he assures (…) In one year, we have not lost any customers and we have gone from 9.8 million sensors managed to 11.4 million. Sigfox was losing between 60 to 80 million dollars a year, we will be at less than 15 million this year”, assures the one who is preparing a new fundraiser and wants to “accelerate”.
A strategy rather well perceived by the employees of Labège, these ex-sifoxers who have become “bees”. “We are rather happy with the choice that was ours, explains Antoine MaIer, the employee representative at the time of the takeover procedure. Because there is a real strategic project, a transparency of the management”. “Before, we were jostling for the biggest slice of a pie that didn’t really exist. Now we are happy to have resumed our innovation activities”, he adds.
The employees approve of the “mix of technologies” proposed by Henri Bong, especially enthusiastic about the sobriety of the IoT. In the fields of tracking, smart meters or buildings, security, the boss of UnaBiz believes in the “low power” market. “If we want to connect billions of objects, we don’t just need highways, we also need cycle paths,” he advocates.