Vodacom Group enters into an agreement to acquire majority stake in IoT.nxt

Vodacom Group has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in IoT.nxt in a move that will significantly accelerate Vodacom's Internet of Things (IoT) strategy and transform its dedicated IoT business unit.

PRETORIA, South Africa & DALLAS - May 20, 2019 - PrAtlas -- Vodacom has identified IoT as a key strategic growth area for the Group. This latest acquisition will enable Vodacom to operate across the full IoT value chain and develop best-in-class solutions for clients across a number of industry verticals.

IoT.nxt develops world-class technology and is an industry-leading end-to-end IoT solutions provider with operations in the USA, Europe and South Africa.

Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub says: "In addition to accelerating Vodacom's Internet of Things strategy, our investment in IoT.nxt brings a number of advantages to Vodacom's existing IoT capability, including class-leading platform technology. For example, this will allow us to better orchestrate the information obtained from sensors and edge devices as well as enable us to further scale our IoT business across multiple verticals as we move up the value-chain. Vodacom will continue to seek strategic acquisition opportunities to drive ongoing investment in the IoT sector and to become the digitalisation partner of choice for enterprise clients and customers."

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IoT.nxt CEO Nico Steyn says: "This partnership is incredibly exciting for IoT.nxt. It allows us to combine the power of our technology and the considerable strength of Vodacom's capabilities, footprint and brand. Vodacom has critically evaluated many platforms globally, and has had operational success in projects with us, so this partnership resulted from these wins. IoT.nxt delivers significant technical differentiation and allows Vodacom to leverage the technology across all industries, allowing for both scalability and rapid time-to-market. Vodacom's investment will provide us with the freedom to expand our business vision while we build a class-leading product that will be sold globally, through multiple channels, including Vodacom's competitors."

IoT.nxt's innovative edge technology and end-to-end platform is business transformative. The combination of its protocol agnostic information layer and its flexible architecture allows for rapid solution development and the realisation of benefits.

Investment holding companyTalent10 Holdings provided the funding for the establishment of IoT.nxt in late 2015 and invested a further R100m in 2017 for the opening of its European office. Talent10 is a major current shareholder in the company. Talent10 Holdings CEO Wayne Fitzjohn says: "Co-founding IoT.nxt has proved to be one of our most significant decisions to date."

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The significant investment by Vodacom will allow IoT.nxt to further commercialise a number of its vertical solutions into off-the-shelf products.

Vodacom is a leading African communications company providing a wide range of communication services, including mobile voice, messaging, data, financial and converged services. Vodacom is majority owned by Vodafone (60.5% holding).

IoT.nxt's IoT platform is a digital transformation enabler making the Internet of Things a reality. IoT.nxt unlocks exponential business value by harnessing the power of system and device interoperability. Their unique technology stack bridges the gap between all protocols in the industrial ecosystem, creating a single integration/translation point. Its patented Raptor^TM gateway allows organisations to retrofit all existing legacy systems with no rip and replace.

http://www.iotnxt.com