Tuya Smart (NYSE: TUYA), a global IoT development platform service provider, listed its shares in Hong Kong on Tuesday. The new listing comes 15 months after the firm raised $915 million in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange.
Tuya is following an ongoing trend of US-listed Chinese companies seeking a dual listing in Hong Kong. Pricing its initial offering in Hong Kong at HK$19.30, the company plans to use the proceeds to enhance its IoT technologies and infrastructure, expand and enhance product offerings, and pursue strategic partnerships in the next five years.
In the first quarter of 2022, Tuya has seen robust revenue growth in its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, bringing in $5.8 million – a yearly 147% increase – thanks to fast growth in its value-added services, such as monthly subscription revenue. The company’s newly launched smart private cloud product, Cube solution, has achieved important breakthroughs with new customers in the first half of this year. Despite the various challenges of the pandemic, Tuya is seeing strong growth in its enterprise-facing SasS service and overseas expansion.
Founded in 2014, Tuya focuses on providing PaaS and SaaS to brands, OEMs, developers, and retail chains across a wide range of industries, including consumer electronics, hospitality, energy, lighting, and more.
Strong growth in SaaS
Many of Tuya’s SaaS customers are property developers and hotel owners looking to digitize their offerings. In May, Tuya reached a strategic partnership with China’s top mobile payment app Alipay. The two companies will jointly help hotels cut costs and increase efficiency by adding smart devices, hardware, and managing software. A Tuya-powered smart hotel aims to increase conversion rate by cutting down check-in and check-out times and increasing the interconnection between different devices in the hotel.
Tuya also made substantial progress in its smart private cloud product, Cube solution. Several leading customers in different countries and industries have recognized the firm’s private cloud solution. Telkom Indonesia, the largest telecom operator in Indonesia with service coverage of over 55% of all Indonesian households and hundreds of millions of registered users, will use Cube solution to tap into the strong spending power of consumers in its network, accelerating the development of its Indonesian smart home appliance market.
Overseas expansion
Tuya offers a holistic solution to companies around the world looking to digitize their products, including connectivity hardware, platform services, and app development. The firm has seen accelerated growth in partnering with overseas clients.
For example, Malaysia’s leading hotel system integrator Core System Technologies is using Tuya’s hotel SaaS solution to create the first smart hotel in Malaysia. In Mexico, industrial lighting brand Dimas Lighting used Tuya’s software capabilities to complete the construction of its intelligent platform for commercial lighting and implemented several industrial lighting projects.
Earlier this year, Tuya partnered with PEARL. GmbH, a leading German mail-order company and online channel for consumer electronics and smart home products. The two companies have agreed to work together to boost smart home adoption in the European market, introducing consumers to a wide range of smart home products, including light bulbs, smart sockets, and various other home appliances, all connected and controlled by a single mobile app developed on the Tuya platform.
Moreover, Tuya also announced a strategic partnership with Denver A/S, a leading European consumer electronics distributor, in June. The two companies will work together to promote a wide range of smart home products in Europe, including smart home and security products.
The future
Tuya was selected as a top 10 IoT supplier in IT research and consultancy firm Gartner’s 2020 report on “Competitive Landscape: IoT Platform Vendors.” Gartner analyzed hundreds of tech companies worldwide for the report.
In 2021, Tuya was also included as a Sample Vendor in Gartner’s recently released report, Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Business Capabilities, which focuses on wide-scale digital change that will impact all industries and enterprises.
According to the report, the market penetration for digitally connected products is 1% to 5% of the target audience. Companies face many challenges in the process of adopting smart technologies, including internal frictions and the lack of a clear business strategy. This is where businesses like Tuya Smart can step in and help companies stay connected to customers, improve their products, and optimize their business models.