On March 18, US Eastern Time, Tuya, the world’s leading IoT cloud platform, landed on the New York Stock Exchange, announcing that the “World’s First Stock in the IoT Cloud Space” was successfully listed under the ticker “TUYA”. Tuya’s IPO price made it the third company in Gaocheng Capital’s portfolio with a market value of over US$10 billion after Youzan (8083.HK) and Ming Yuan Cloud (0909.HK)!
7 years of blazing the trail and assiduity have made Tuya a world-leading IoT cloud platform
Tuya was founded in 2014 by Xueji Wang, Liaohan Chen, Yi Yang, Ruixin Zhou from a small apartment in Hangzhou, with the goal of becoming “the world’s leading IoT cloud platform”. During the past 7 years, the team has launched the IoT PaaS (IoT cloud platform), industry SaaS and various value-added cloud services, pioneering the build-out of cloud infrastructure in the age of IoT.
Tuya’s IoT PaaS provides a complete suite of solutions for the development of end products, APPs and cloud applications to help brands, developers, and manufacturers develop and manage IoT devices quickly and at low cost. Its industry SaaS is fully integrated with its PaaS to support the plug-and-play of industry customers so they can easily and securely deploy, connect and manage a large number of heterogeneous IoT devices, improve operational efficiency, and optimize costs. Tuya’s value-added cloud solutions provide enterprises and end users with AI-powered virtual assistance, big data analytics, IoT data storage, message push and content services, etc., greatly improving the IoT experience.
In 2020, Tuya had over 5000 subscribers, including brands, OEMs, industry operators and system integrators. Tuya’s IoT PaaS has helped more than 2700 brands develop smart IoT devices, including world-leading brands such as Calex, Philips and Schneider Electric.
By the end of 2020, over 200 million smart devices worldwide had used Tuya’s PaaS solutions. According to CIC, Tuya has become the world’s largest IoT PaaS solution provider by the number of devices connected. At the same time, its IoT platform has more than 262,000 developers with over 122 million AI-enabled voice-based interactions and 84 billion requests from devices on a daily basis. Powered by Tuya enables more than 252,000 device SKUs, and its products and services cover 220+ countries and regions as well as over 100,000 online and offline sales channels around the world, wielding significant influence in the end market with its scale and capabilities across the board.
Boasting its neutral, open and highly integrated ecosystem, Tuya joins hands with all players in the IoT industry for mutual benefits and win-win outcomes.
Empowering its users in every way with a neutral, open industry ecosystem underpinned by technologies and marketing and sales channels is the main reason that Tuya is a trusted partner for so many clients. Its IoT cloud platform resolutely remains neutral and is not bound by any public cloud provider or specific communication protocol. Developers can create standardized IoT products with Tuya’s remarkable variety of APIs, and freely connect to any brand or product based on the same standard.
In addition to being an IoT development platform, Tuya’s more important role is to produce ecosystems, that is, it provides developers with industrial chain and technical support, and also helps developers build their own ecosystems. Leveraging Tuya’s extensive and easy-to-use development tools comprised of both software and hardware as well as its market-oriented ecosystems, developers can choose tools that meet their own needs and create an ecosystem environment that is more conducive to their growth. In this process, Tuya and developers have become participants in each other’s ecosystems, working together to promote ecosystem integration. For example, through Tuya’s cloud development platform, developers can build PaaS (Platform as a Service) solutions based on different scenarios such as communities, apartments, hotels, and security. At present, nearly 20,000 cloud developers have worked with Tuya to create smart solutions for multiple industries.
The ecosystems of these different industries blend with each other, shoot greater sparks and chemistry, and create brand-new business models, realizing self-evolution at an accelerated pace. This is a win-win, mutually beneficial result not only for Tuya and developers but also for Tuya and the entire IoT industry.
Victories only belong to the innovators and triumphs come when leaders and followers share the same goal. Gaocheng Capital is with its portfolio companies every step of the way to celebrate every victory and triumph.
Gaocheng Capital is one of the few private equity funds in China that focuses on technology innovation and enterprise services. Behind Gaocheng Capital’s long-term, reciprocal relationships of trust with those high-achieving companies are its in-depth, independent industry research, expertise and extensive connections. It understands the real needs of clients in various industries and keeps its finger on the pulse of those industries and technological innovation, thus helping entrepreneurs seize the opportunities to make breakthroughs in technology and application.
After investing in Tuya, Gaocheng Capital frequently exchange ideas with Tuya’s management team, and there’s been a significant amount of effort to explore Tuya’s strategies, product pricing, and brand positioning. With Gaocheng’s help, Tuya has successfully gained access to resources in many emerging industries.
As one of Tuya’s board members, Jing Hong, the founding partner of Gaocheng Capital, said that IoT is fundamentally changing the way individuals interact with the physical world and is a technological revolution no less than the mobile Internet. As an investment fund focusing on the enterprise service market, Gaocheng really resonates with Tuya’s corporate culture under the leadership of Xueji Wang that “Victories only belong to the innovators and triumphs come when leaders and followers share the same goal.” Tuya has established a booming ecosystem of brands, OEMs, developers, partners and end users. Its open architecture allows consumers to manage all devices of different brands through a single portal. More and more brands now want to join its ecosystem and interact with other device brands. The self-reinforcing network effect and word-of-mouth communication have helped Tuya quickly widen its moat. Tuya defines and unleashes new demand with new supply of solutions, and creates long-lasting value for its global clients and the society as a whole.
The ambitions of Tuya and Gaocheng are as magnificent as the stars and as vast as the oceans.
The bell ringing marks the end of the last chapter in Tuya’s story and the opening of a new chapter. At this new milestone in Tuya’s history, Gaocheng Capital looks forward to embarking on a new journey with Tuya while supporting its team to further solidify its industry leadership and become a beacon to the global IoT industry.
