Exclusive: Accel-backed Indian IoT firm bags $3m in seed money

Bytebeam, an India-based IoT firm, has raised US$3 million in a seed funding round from Accel India, Together Fund, Strive, and other investors.

Bytebeam co-founders (from left) Bharadwaaj Ramakrishnan, Gautam BT, and Raviteja K / Photo credit: Bytebeam

The round also saw participation from AdvantEdge, Redbus founder Phanindra Sama, Hasura co-founder Tanmai Gopal, Juspay founder Vimal Kumar, ex-Flipkart chief people officer Mekin Maheshwari, Slintel founder Deepak Anchala, Haptik founder Aaktrit Vaish, and other angel investors.

Beam me up, Scotty

Bytebeam aims to be the one-stop provider of cloud-based backend infrastructure for smart devices. Its services allow companies to manage over-the-air updates, data analytics, communications, and more.

The company currently works with 15 companies and is aiming to raise that number to 150 firms in the next 12 months. Bytebeam counts Micelio Motors, Exponent Energy, and Matter Motor Works, among others as its clients.

In October last year, the IoT firm raised US$250,000 in a pre-seed round from Accel as part of the latter’s Atoms program. Four of Bytebeam’s 15 clients were already using Bytebeam’s solutions before the fundraise.

Bytebeam was founded in 2019 by former Ather Energy employees Gautam BT, Bharadwaaj Ramakrishnan, and Raviteja K.

Gautam has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. He has also worked with companies such as Flipkart in the past.

Ramakrishnan, an electronics and communication engineer, has previously worked with firms such as SanDisk. Raviteja, on the other hand, is an alum of the Indian Institute of Technology, Pune, and has worked with Intel in the past.

See also: Is Vietnam SEA’s next blockchain hub?

“We created Bytebeam with the vision to make it 10x easier for companies to build smart IoT products,” Gautam said in a statement.

The co-founder and CEO further said that Bytebeam’s services are sector agnostic, and can be deployed in various industries, including agtech, dronetech, and smart homes, among others.

The firm has built its tech from the ground up and has deployed TLS 1.2 protocol to allay security concerns. The company also ensures it does not share sensitive user data, he added.