INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Polte has raised another $12.5 million
The company is building a service that leverages 4G (and potentially 5G) signal to track things for commercial and industrial use cases
The main advantage is that using cellular signal uses a lot less battery than acquiring GPS location and transmitting it over
cellular.Today’s funding round is an extension of the company’s Series A round
In 2017, Polte raised $6 million — and the company is raising another $12.5 million this year
Polte isn’t disclosing the list of investors
The startup participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield.There are many potential use cases for Polte, but most of them involve
tracking stuff on the move with as little battery as possible
You could use it for your supply chain, if you’re running a logistics or transportation company, in the energy or automotive industry,
etc.If you want to use an IoT device to track a package over multiple weeks, it can be a costly effort as you need to determine the location
of the package using GPS and transmit the location of the package over the air
While GPS is insanely accurate, it also requires a ton of battery just to position a device on a map.That’s why some devices rely on Wi-Fi
signal to triangulate a position with a database of Wi-Fi access points
But that’s not as accurate, especially in the countryside.Polte turns data from the cell modem into location information
It works with existing modems; Polte is a software solution
None of the computing is done on the device itself
Polte-enabled devices transmit 300 bytes of data back to Polte’s servers so the company can determine the location a few seconds
later.This way, you can use cheaper IoT devices to track packages
And if you’re running a company that wants to track thousands or millions of items, that could help you save a ton of money over the long
