In order to solve the "last mile" of smart homes, "Ella IoT" launched Ayla Home

In 2010, AT&T, the largest operator in the United States, launched the layout of the Internet of Things, and then the concept of the Internet of Things set off a global boom, and a large number of operators bred the need to build an Internet of Things PaaS cloud platform. Under this market opportunity, Ella IoT, founded in 2010, has become a service provider for a number of operators around the world, building privatized IoT PaaS clouds for them, including AT&T, Sprint, Europe Orange, China Unicom, China Telecom, etc. After its establishment, Ella IoT played the role of service provider for operators for about 4 years.

In 2014, with the launch of smart speakers such as Echo and Google Home by Amazon and GOOGLE, smart home products equipped with AI voice recognition technology have become killer applications in the market, thus promoting the development of the Internet of Things industry, including smart homes. The landing of voice AI technology has germinated the demand for public cloud on large and small smart home appliances.

After smart speakers and other products can be gradually applied, the business focus of Ella IoT is no longer limited to providing operators with public cloud PaaS services, but focuses on the connection between AI voice and PaaS cloud material control, and provides PaaS, SaaS, small programs for customers, APP and other services, referred to as "white box solutions", while the hardware is controlled by the customer. However, the solution requires both parties to open source to each other and takes more than 10 months to develop a product that combines hardware and software, and has cloud services.

Especially after 2017, the foreign smart home market has gradually prospered, promoting the rapid development of domestic cross-border e-commerce. In order to improve the efficiency of R&D, Ella IoT has developed a new set of "public cloud + module + SaaS" standardized universal solution, that is, "black box solution". Ella IoT CEO Liu Yulong revealed to 36Kr that the principle of this solution is to fix the cloud service in the chip module in the agent way, after obtaining the cloud module of the Ella IoT, the customer does not need to know the algorithm and rules, just understand the function configuration of each PIN corner in the module and its attributes, in order to configure the customer's own motherboard.

As a result, this becomes a zero-code low-code development scenario. The biggest advantage of this program is that it greatly shortens the research and development cycle, shortens the previous 10 months to 2 or 3 months, and improves the development efficiency. In terms of customers, the company has provided such solution services to Midea, Haier, Hisense, Bull and other home appliance manufacturers.

So far, with smart home as the main incision, Ella IoT has clarified two major directions of business. First of all, for B-end large customers, Ella IoT provides PaaS cloud + module services; secondly, for C-end users, the company provides SaaS+ machine products, and in order to do a good job in the "last kilometer" construction of smart homes, launched its own whole house smart brand "Ayla Home", and the application scenarios cover smart homes, smart hotels, smart real estate, smart communities, etc.

In the first business, Liu Yulong revealed that the essence of paaS+ cloud module is to empower customers, providing them with standardized AIoT solutions, mobile cellular communication solutions, etc., and can also provide customized services for customers. At present, the company's cooperative customers include large home appliance manufacturers, car companies, intelligent POS machine manufacturers, etc. The one-stop developer platform built by PaaS+ cloud module can help intelligent terminal manufacturers achieve rapid product access, complete SaaS development/super APP development in 1 day, complete public cloud deployment in 3 days, and complete product landing in 2 months. Terminal manufacturers can develop and innovate according to their own needs.

It is worth mentioning that the company will incorporate the products of the cooperative manufacturers into the Ella IoT 15+N product ecological platform. The platform consists of 15 sensor-centered smart devices and 200-300 smart products selected by Ella's preferred quality control system. Among them, the 15 core devices include: gateway, door magnet, water immersion, human body induction, situation switch, temperature and humidity sensor, smoke sense, gas sense, sound and light alarm, infrared converter, door lock, etc. The composition of 200-300 preferred ecological products is divided into two categories: the first is the whole house intelligent products personalized with the company's one-stop developer platform; the second is the excellent large and small home appliances and pan-intelligent terminal brands on the market.

Secondly, Ayla Home, the whole house intelligent brand built by Ella IoT, mainly provides users with active intelligent services, upgrades to active AI intelligent space management services on the basis of the entire delivery plan, and recommends the most suitable whole-house intelligent solutions for users according to different apartment types. Liu Yulong told 36Kr that some of the smart products included in Ayla Home come from smart home appliance manufacturers that cooperate with Ella IoT, but the entire set of AIoT systems and software services is responsible for Ella IoT, and the design, service, installation and construction of these steps are completed by Ayla Home. Therefore, Ayla Home will become a comprehensive service platform to solve the "last mile construction" of smart homes, and build a channel pattern of "manufacturer integration".

At present, Alya home has formed cooperation with many hotels in China, such as Jinjiang, Vienna International Hotel, Huizhou Manyue Hotel, etc., to provide them with software and hardware product matrix and smart hotel SaaS solutions, so as to achieve occupancy linkage, rapid response to customer demand, hardware management and monitoring, multi-dimensional analysis of operational data and other functions to reduce hotel operating costs, reduce energy consumption, improve service efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Smart Hotel SaaS

In terms of profit model, Ella IoT provides three different charging models: hardware module, SaaS and PaaS. First, hardware modules as part of the profitable income; Secondly, SaaS mainly adopts the subscription type, and charges according to the number of years and months; paaS charges are more special, and a part of the license fee will be charged to customers after shipment.

In terms of core advantages, Liu Yulong said that the most difficult part of the Internet of Things to break through lies in cloud services and SaaS systems, not hardware. In the early days of its establishment, Ella IoT spent a lot of time focusing on the development of cloud platforms, and in addition, its time in the field of Internet of Things was one step ahead of other peers, thus laying a good foundation for the company's development.

In terms of team, Ella IoT currently has nearly 400 employees, of which R&D personnel account for up to 80%.