Pilot projects to be launched in the water and landscaping sectors across 
Singapore, Australia and the U.S. 


"Growing populations, increased urbanisation, rising labour costs, lack of 
skilled workers, high safety standards and social distancing stipulations – 
various factors have come together resulting in the strong need for remote 
monitoring and IoT/AI solutions. This is why we set up SpaceAge Labs – to help 
organisations improve the way they are managing their widespread assets for 
improved efficiency, reliability and safety," explained Mr Deepak Pitta, 
founder and CEO, SpaceAge Labs. 

Others obviously believe in Deepak's vision. SpaceAge Labs today revealed it 
has secured seed funding of US$1.25 million, led by Silicon Solution Partners 
(SSP), a VC firm supporting deep tech start-ups, and SEEDS Capital, the 
investment arm of Enterprise Singapore. SpaceAge Labs is also supported by NUS 
Enterprise, the entrepreneurial arm of the National University of Singapore 
(NUS), Imagine H2O (a water innovation accelerator) and PUB's Singapore Water 
Exchange. Planetspark, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SGX mainboard listed 
Excelpoint Technology Ltd. is also working closely with SpaceAge Labs to 
accelerate their technology, alongside investing in this seed round. SpaceAge 
Labs will use this funding to grow its team, expand internationally, and roll 
out pilot projects across Singapore, Australia, and the U.S. 

"We view SpaceAge Labs as having a strong and experienced technical team with 
successful use cases in the deployment of cost-competitive IoT solutions, with 
both a hardware and software platform to improve the real time monitoring and 
manpower productivity enhancement in traditional eco real estate management. 
This will further expand their business traction into other commercial segments 
as well," said David Ng, CEO of SSP.

"SpaceAge Lab's innovative solutions, which are designed to help businesses in 
water and landscaping services to monitor their outdoor and remote assets, 
could potentially help drive their digitalization journey in the new normal as 
they create operational efficiencies and additional revenue streams. We look 
forward to supporting SpaceAge Lab on their commercialization journey, 
alongside our co-investor    Silicon Solutions Partners," said Ms Tan Kaixin, 
General Manager, SEEDS Capital.

Revolutionising monitoring

SpaceAge Labs is a deep tech start-up that was incubated at NUS Enterprise 
@Singapore Science Park. It is revolutionising operations and maintenance of 
remote and distributed assets by collecting asset data using low power, 
long-range wireless IoT devices, together with advanced AI software to generate 
valuable insights. This increases the asset's uptime (due to data-driven 
predictive maintenance), reduces cost (less manpower required) and provides 
peace of mind (operators gain real-time asset visibility). 

The company's flagship product is remoteEye, a complete, sensor-agnostic IoT/AI 
platform that enables connected operations and maintenance. remoteEye consists 
of three parts: 

1. rEye IoT Nodes – low-powered, wireless devices that read and transmit data 
from industrial sensors located at the assets. 
2. Wireless networks – sensor data is transmitted via low power wide area 
wireless networks to the cloud. The networks are at low cost (< $1 per month 
per device), able to transmit over long distances (several kilometres) and 
consume low power (up to five years of battery life). 
3. rEye Data Cloud – enterprise-grade IoT/AI software stores, analyses, and 
visualises this sensor data. This software is secure, easy to use and able to 
scale from managing one to thousands of assets. Proprietary AI software and 
geospatial data analysis provides useful insights and predictions that can be 
accessed via web or mobile.

SpaceAge Labs is targeting three sectors: Water/Wastewater; Urban 
Greenery/Landscaping; and Facilities management. SpaceAge Labs has IoT 
deployments with more than 30 customers, including two Smart Nation pilot 
projects in Singapore. In the first project, SpaceAge Labs worked with the 
National Parks Board (NParks) to ensure their contractors were completing 
grass-cutting operations effectively. IoT devices were worn on the hips of 
grass-cutters, or installed on equipment such as sit-on mowers. These sensors 
transmitted data on the height of post-cut grass. Together with GPS location 
data, NParks could easily verify the completion and quality of grass-cutting 
operations across Singapore. In the second project, SpaceAge Labs collaborated 
with the Public Utilities Board (PUB) to monitor and prevent sewer overflows in 
Singapore's wastewater network. SpaceAge Labs installed 40 IoT devices in sewer 
manholes in three different areas. These devices provided PUB with real-time 
alerts when waste water levels rose too high. When alerted, PUB could check for 
blockages downstream, before overflow occurred, avoiding infrastructure damage, 
as well as public safety and environmental health issues. The real-time 
monitoring solution also informed PUB of areas that are likely to get blocked 
in the future, so proactive, preventative action could be taken. Over a 
12-month period, SpaceAge Labs successfully alerted PUB to 10 events, which 
were promptly cleared resulting in no overflow. 

Seed funding to be used for new pilots and company expansion

SpaceAge Labs will continue more pilots, demonstrating the benefits of its 
remoteEye IoT solution, as well as to find new customers and partners. In first 
half of 2022, SpaceAge Labs will conduct pilots with landscaping companies in 
Australia, to improve efficiencies of their grass-cutting work in Brisbane and 
Sydney. If successful, it could lead to nation-wide deployments. Similar 
landscaping pilots will be conducted in the U.S. in the latter half of 2022. In 
Singapore, SpaceAge Labs plans to conduct several pilots, which will monitor 
water consumption patterns and detect leaks in facilities, monitor weather/air 
quality in outdoor spaces, monitor water quality in swimming pools, and monitor 
remote mechanical/ electrical equipment, such as decentralised water treatment 
skids and water tankers. 

"We hope to conduct more pilot trials with companies and governments, to 
showcase how remoteEye results in cost savings, improved safety/hygiene levels, 
improved performance and reduced reliance on manpower. In order to do so, we 
will need to increase our headcount and expand internationally. Currently, our 
team consists of 12 people, mainly in Singapore, though one of our co-founders 
has moved to Australia to supervise the pilots there. Over the next 6-12 
months, we plan to double our headcount, requiring people in Product 
Development and Sales & Marketing functions. We also hope to open international 
offices in Australia and the U.S. to reach our target audience better," 
explained Mr Deepak Pitta.  

SpaceAge Labs' entrepreneurial journey

Deepak founded SpaceAge Labs in 2016, with co-founders Mr Ananth Subba (Chief 
Technology Officer, who is currently based in Australia), Mr Leela Krishna 
(Chief Business Officer) and Mr Sashikumar Y (Chief Product Officer). In 2017, 
SpaceAge Labs became an NUS Enterprise incubatee, based within NUS its 
deep-tech incubation facility in Singapore Science Park I, where access to 
hardware, a prototyping lab, and networks to potential partners and customers 
helped tremendously. 

SpaceAge Labs collaborated with the NUS Office of Facilities Management team to 
trial the first version of its remoteEye IoT solution. This trial was conducted 
to detect faulty streetlights on the NUS campus, leading to improved safety for 
pedestrians and drivers at night. In 2020, SpaceAge Labs moved to its own unit 
at PUB's Singapore Water Exchange, to accommodate its growing size and be 
closer to the water industry ecosystem, one of its key target verticals. 

For more information, please visit https://www.spaceage-labs.com/ 




CONTACT: Chan Yiu Lin, Greener Grass Communications, +65 9765 5897, 
yiulin@greenergrass.com.sg

Source: SpaceAge Labs