Photo/Shetuwang

Dec. 11 (NBD) – China's leading Internet of things (IoT) company G7 has completed a financing round of 320 million U.S. dollars in October, marking the highest amount of funding in the global IoT sector, announced the company Monday.

The latest round of funding is led by HOPU Investments, and previous shareholders such as Bank of China Investment and Tencent also participated.

G7 claimed to have received approximately 500 million U.S. dollars of investment through multiple rounds in over a year.

Founded in 2010, the Beijing-based tech company provides integrated fleet management solutions to major logistics enterprises and truck fleets via its AI technologies and IoT platform, with services covering security, payment, financing and smart devices.

Currently G7 has over 60,000 customers, with over 800,000 vehicles connected to its service.

The money raised will mainly be used in research & development, said G7. The company will continue upgrading the IoT fleet management platform to cover devices involved in the supply chain, and lay the infrastructure for smart logistics based on IoT and self-driving technologies.

The cost and efficiency of logistic service are vital for both e-commerce and retailing, and the quality of such service depends on infrastructure, which will be completely digitalized in the future, Zhang Jielong, CFO of G7, told NBD.

It is noted that G7 established a new company with partners in April to manufacture a new generation of heavy trucks that combine self-driving, new energy and logistic big data. 

During this year's Double Eleven Shopping Festival, China's logistics industry saw a daily peak of 1 billion packages, which calls for a transformation from a labor intensive model to technology-centered one. 

According to Ma Jieren, president of G7, China currently has more than 7 million trucks in trunk transport, with 800,000 (116,000 U.S. dollars) to 1 million yuan (114,900 U.S. dollars) annual expense for each truck, which means a multi-trillion-yuan market.

With the development of IoT technologies, companies are increasingly attracted to this sector. 

On December 3, Ant Financial, Alibaba's fintech arm, teamed with Centurium Capital to lead 1-billion-yuan (114.9-million-U.S. dollar) series C round of financing of Keking Technology, a SaaS (Software as a Service) cloud platform for the logistic industry. The next day Ant Financial led another investment in smart road freight start-up Sinoiov.

E-commerce giant JD.com has been an active participant in smart logistics as well. Apart from building its own unmanned delivery fleet, JD.com also invested in robot maker CSG Smart Science and self-driving vehicle manufacturer Idriverplus.

Competition in smart logistics will be more fierce, and Ma considers the scale of G7's data and neutrality of its industry-wide platform as core competitive edges.

Email: limenglin@nbd.com.cn