Connovate Tech acquired by consumer electronics- Binatone

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Connovate Technology, makers of the Gecko bluetooth tags, has been acquired by Hong Kong-based consumer electronics company Binatone for an undisclosed amount, reports The Economic Times. Following this deal, the two year-old Bangalore-based company will merge with Binatone’s subsidiary Hubble Connected and will also get access to the 1500 stores in United States and 1000 in Europe that Binatone has a presence in. The report also mentions that Gecko will be bundled with home, pet and baby monitoring solutions that Binatone sells under Motorola’s brand.

 

Last year, in November Connovate had raised $135,410 through the crowfunding platform Indiegogo. At the time it had also received pre-orders for 7500 devices, mostly from the US, the UK and Germany, including 500 from India. Gecko allows people to control and spot various objects around them using a smartphone. Besides tracking, the device can also be used to trigger a camera, change music using gestures, motion detection, and smart leash, among other features.

Other products: Connovate’s other product is Weight Smart, which is quite similar to Fitbit Aria except that it uses Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi. The device comes with its own custom app using which a person can log weight and even connect to Run Keeper to create some actionable information from it. Based on this blog post Connovate seems to be focused on the fitness category. It’ll be interesting to see what device(s) the company comes up with next.

Other Indian ‘Internet of Things’ companies

Internet of Things (IoT) basically refers to everyday devices that are connected to the Internet. Devices like Gecko and wearable devices come under this category. The wearable devices segment has witnessed quite a bit of activity in India.

– Vishal Gondal’s GOQii, which combines fitness tracking with human coaches, is one of the latest entrant in this segment. It was launched in a limited pilot basis in February this year, and later officially launched in August. It also raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from WhatsApp business development head Neeraj Arora and Amazon Web Services vice president (mobile) Marco Argenti, in August.

– Bangalore-based 2mpower Health Management Services, makers of the GetActive series of fitness trackers, recently launched a new personal health and activity tracker called GetActive tapp.

– Earlier this year, Ahmedabad-based Azoi had developed an iPhone case called Wello that doubled up as a health tracker. In case of Android devices it worked only as a standalone health tracker and a mobile case. The pre-order price for Wello was $199.

– Google had also launched its health and fitness platform Google Fit in June this year. Google Fit provided app developers a single set of APIs that can be used to manage fitness data from apps and sensors on cross-platform devices and on wearables. A couple of months later Apple also launched a similar Healthkit platform.

Connovate Tech acquired by consumer electronics- Binatone, Technology newsTechnical, Technology, Technology Trends
Connovate Tech acquired by consumer electronics- Binatone