Hartford Steam Boiler (HSB) has made an investment in startup Waygum, Inc., which makes a mobile platform for the industrial Internet of Things.
The company was started in 2013 and has developed a mobile app environment that allows industrial customers to proactively monitor equipment and services, view and analyze data, manage inventory, and perform other functions, HSB says. It's able to "capture and visualize critical data for predicting and preventing equipment loss and optimizing business performance," the company adds.
“You can think of Waygum’s mobile app platform as a universal remote control, of sorts, that a business can use to interact with multiple pieces of equipment and information in hard to connect areas,” said Greg Barats, president and chief executive officer of HSB. “The interconnection of equipment, networks, technologies and analytics tied to tools and real-time decision-making is evolving rapidly — being engaged in this evolution enables HSB to accelerate product innovation and create value for clients.”
The investment is the first in a series of planned investments by a strategic corporate venture capital group HSB started last year. That group, which is led by former The Hartford innovation executive Jacqueline LeSage Krause, joins similar initiatives from
"Improving operational efficiency and loss mitigation are some of the alluring value propositions of the Industrial Internet of Things, and we are happy that a leader in this space like HSB is validating our approach,” said Sundar Krish, CEO and founder of Waygum.
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