Aqara Completes B+ Strategic Funding Round, Making Smart Home Technology a Mass-Market Consumer Product
A more complete smart home experience.
Aqara, a Xiaomi ecosystem company, recently announced the completion of a Series B+ round worth tens of millions of dollars, co-led by Cathay Capital and YuanYi Investment. This marks Aqara's second funding round this year, following an earlier investment from SEB, a global leader in home appliances.
Aqara is a leading provider of smart home and IoT solutions in China. Previously, it raised consecutive rounds from top-tier international investors including Xiaomi, Shunwei Capital, Cathay Capital, Gaorong Ventures, and Lanting Capital. With a world-class R&D team and multiple core patents in IoT, Aqara has leveraged its solid technical capabilities and exceptional product design to enable users to independently DIY, install, and program their own smart scenes — truly making smart home technology accessible as a mass-market consumer product.
In recent years, Aqara's product sales have grown exponentially, with cumulative shipments exceeding ten million units. Since 2016, the company has achieved profitability at scale and entered a period of rapid growth. In 2017, Aqara introduced an innovative offline smart home retail model — the Aqara Service Provider network — to bridge the last 100 meters of smart home delivery and accelerate adoption in millions of households. The company plans to develop 2,000 service providers over the next three years, covering tier-1 through tier-4 cities, to deliver more comprehensive smart home experiences to users.
"In the past, the smart home industry sold devices and let users take them home to DIY — I call this the Smart Home 1.0 era. But these users remained a niche audience. To fulfill the vision of 'bringing smart homes into millions of households' and creating a superior user experience, smart home technology needs on-the-ground service. To use the auto industry as an analogy: we can't keep selling car parts and expect users to assemble their own vehicles. We need to assemble the car and hand them the keys. I call this integrated product-to-service model Smart Home 2.0. In Smart Home 2.0, we're no longer selling smart home devices — we're selling 'lifestyles and scenes.' Aqara Service Providers play a crucial role in this new era. In just one year of exploration, the service provider network has grown rapidly with excellent results and widespread user acclaim. Its one-stop, high-quality service has set an industry benchmark and become the gold-standard offering in smart home. We plan to develop 2,000 Aqara Service Providers over the next three years, establishing the industry's first smart home 4S service system," said Eugene You, founder and CEO of Aqara. "Aqara's smart home systems are not only being deployed in residences, but also in apartments, hotels, schools, and commercial buildings, becoming a new favorite for comfort, health, and energy efficiency. According to statistics, hotels and commercial buildings equipped with Aqara smart home products can achieve 20% to 40% energy savings through automated settings that turn lights and air conditioning on when people are present and off when they're not. In the next phase, Aqara will leverage smart hardware and data platforms to realize its 'Connectivity + Data + Service' IoT strategic ecosystem across broader domains including smart homes, smart security, community services, and commercial and public buildings."
Another Smart Home Hit: The Xiaomi Mi Smart Door Lock Debuts
Since joining the Xiaomi ecosystem in 2014, Aqara has focused on R&D and manufacturing of smart home products, with particular emphasis on low-power, innovative smart home systems. On December 5, 2018, following the launch of two smart door locks under its Aqara brand, the company officially introduced the Xiaomi Mi Smart Door Lock through a crowdfunding campaign on Xiaomi Mall. The product attracted significant attention, hitting its 10 million yuan crowdfunding target in just 1 hour and 5 minutes, and surpassing 20 million yuan in 3 hours and 35 minutes.
This meticulously crafted Xiaomi Mi Smart Door Lock achieves industry-leading standards in security and ease of use, while leveraging the Xiaomi smart home ecosystem to enable rich device integration and application scenarios. As a key product in the whole-home smart system, the smart door lock will also hold significant strategic importance in Aqara's future product roadmap.
Aqara Builds a Better Smart Home Experience
Currently, Aqara's gateway not only supports Apple HomeKit but has recently completed integration with the Mi Home ecosystem, making it virtually the only smart home gateway on the market that simultaneously supports both mature platforms. Additionally, Aqara Service Providers have established deep partnerships with JD.com, Suning, Gome, Red Star Macalline, China Mobile, China Telecom Group Co., Ltd., Easyhome, Wanda, and Yintai, among others — empowering intelligence through enhanced service delivery. Going forward, Aqara will continue to leverage its refined new retail system and thoughtfully crafted whole-home smart solutions to advance the realization of a smarter China through quality products and services.
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