Sunnyvale, CA (PRWEB) August 18, 2016 -- Tekpea, the leading provider of disruptive technologies that connect communication and control protocols to the cloud, announced that it has completed a o round of institutional financing from FCP Innovacion, the venture arm of one of the largest utilities in South America, Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM), headquartered in Colombia. The investment enables Tekpea to accelerate its growth path and expand the deployment of its multi-protocol platform across utilities and industrial clients. FCP Innovacion General Partner, Felipe Zarate, will join Tekpea’s board as a director.
FCP Innovacion invests in companies with leading-edge technologies which have the ability to redefine or create large new markets. FCP is focused on technologies in the energy, water, waste transformation and ICT industries, with a special interest in IoT (Internet of Things) enabled software and services.
This financing builds on an exceptional start to the year for Tekpea, which has seen strong sales traction from large utilities globally, and key executive appointments, including Dr. Vincent Bemmel as Tekpea’s CTO and Humphrey Polanen as Executive Chairman.
“Tekpea is perfectly positioned to become the leading provider of enabling technologies that allow traditional devices—such as energy meters, appliances and even street lights—to connect to the cloud. From a business perspective this connected intelligence results in increased revenues for utilities by more timely and accurate billing, reduction of loss due to fraud and enhancing overall efficiency of the utilities’ infrastructure. Tekpea provides a complete platform for multiple protocols and allows flexible integration for said devices”, said Felipe Zarate. “We believe that Tekpea’s complete solution enables the IoT promise to become a reality, on price points that make it attractive to utilities and industrial clients across the globe. The IoT space is full of players, and Tekpea is truly differentiated based on its model and its solution” Zarate goes on to say, “Tekpea understands that, ultimately, it’s about delivering a cost-efficient solution with leading-edge strengths—not just collecting a data point, not just connecting a node—but value-added results for critical industries”.
“We are really excited to have the endorsement of FCP with this investment,” says Davide Tappeiner, Tekpea’s CEO. “Their Limited Partner, EPM, is a leading utility in Latin America and FCP’s mission is to search the world for the best companies and technologies that are shaping the future of utilities. Tekpea is honored to be among them.”
Tekpea offers a solution that allows traditionally unconnected devices to be cloud-ready, something that has been historically achieved via capital expenditure and/or retrofits that carry material costs and intensive deployment efforts. Moreover, in the world of Industrial Internet of Things (IIot), being able to get data points from field devices has become easier as technologies are natively able to measure and control devices and appliances. Tekpea´s technology platform goes beyond this, allowing devices and appliances to be controlled and automated based on a proprietary end-to-end technology platform that enables systems and services deployment capabilities unheard of until now.” Davide Tappeiner says, “Tekpea is different in its modularity, adaptability, security, reliability, and multi-protocol capabilities, turning traditional device connectivity to the cloud on its head and enabling a faster and better level of control.”
Beyond the latent opportunities related to IIoT, Tekpea is the platform where all device information comes together. “Tekpea not only provides a robust technology around monitoring and control, but it also has the potential of becoming the platform by which all devices and appliances are measured, controlled, and managed,” says Vincent Bemmel, the company’s CTO. “In essence, Tekpea is the place where all data is unified in a single tool that provides the additional advantages of visibility, insight, reporting, maintenance, and inventory.”
About Tekpea
Tekpea’s disruptive patented technology platform provides a resilient communication path between devices and the places where energy data is used for decision-making and control, in a variety of scenarios, requirements and applications. Founded in 2010 and based in Sunnyvale, California, Tekpea partners with product and service companies, helping them to build solutions and deliver innovative products in the exploding energy efficiency and automation market.
About FCP Innovacion
FCP Innovacion is the venture arm of EPM (Empresas Públicas de Medellín), the largest utility in Colombia, a multi-service utility providing energy water, natural gas, waste management and telecommunications services to an aggregate base of ~20 million clients across 7 countries. FCP’s mission is to invest in technology-based companies around the world that that the potential to redefine or reshape core utility markets. To date, FCP has consolidated investments in 3 countries and continues to strengthen a diversified portfolio of start-ups and scale-ups.
Davide Tappeiner, Tekpea, inc., http://www.tekpea.com, +1 (408) 462-9650, [email protected]
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