Wearable tech firm KaHa raises funding from ICT Fund, others

Singapore-based KaHa Pte. Ltd, which provides an Internet of Things (IoT) platform for brands to launch smart wearable products, said it has raised $6.2 million (Rs 43 crore at current exchange rate) in its Series B funding round led by previous investor ICT Fund, which is a deep-tech European venture capital firm.

The company, with offices in Bengaluru, Shenzhen and Geneva, said that the funds raised in the round will be harnessed to boost research and development and scale up operations in the Asia-Pacific region.

This year, KaHa launched the COVE recover-to-cloud (R2C) IoT Innovation Lab, a multiparty innovation and research lab. “Apart from helping us expand our product line, this new round will allow KaHa to discover more breakthrough products that can support other verticals and increase the COVE platform’s availability, accessibility and affordability,” said Pawan Gandhi, co-founder and chief executive of KaHa.

“KaHa is well-placed to capitalise on the fast-growing market opportunity in smart wearables,” said Brijesh Pande, managing partner of ICT Fund.

Founded in Singapore in 2015 by Gandhi, Justin Tang and Sudheendra Shantaram, KaHa claims to be one of the few companies in the world to have an end-to-end IoT platform for smart wearables. It had raised an estimated $4.5 million from Singapore-based Spring SEEDS Capital and India-based Titan Company Ltd. Subsequently, it raised funds from India-based early-stage venture capital fund YourNest. 

Deals in the wearables sector

• April 2019: Bengaluru-based medical wearable device startup Ten3t Healthcare Pvt. Ltd raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round of funding from Investment Trust of India’s ITI Growth Opportunities Venture Fund.
• November 2018: GOQii raised an undisclosed amount through a mix of equity and venture debt in a Series B round of funding led by Japan-based Mitsui & Co.
• January 2019: Alphabet Inc.’s Google agreed to acquire for $40 million intellectual property related to a smartwatch tech currently under development at watchmaker Fossil Group Inc.