Internet of things devices developer Borqs International Holdings has closed a $10-million round of funding, led by Qualcomm Ventures and Accel Partners India, barely six weeks before the Beijing and Bengaluru-based company undergoes a $303-million reverse merger.The IoT products and solutions provider already counts a number of leading investors among its list of backers, including Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Keystone Ventures, SK Telecom China Fund and GSR Ventures.
With the closure of the series-E round, the Cayman Islands-registered company, which owns and operates two wholly-owned subsidiaries Bengaluru and in Beijing, has raised about $50 million in venture funding till date.
“Qualcomm hopes to find future opportunities to work with Borqs to share leading edge and innovative 4G phone design expertise with Indian and global OEMs,“ said Karthee Madasamy, managing director, Qualcomm Ventures India.
“Borqs has a great set of customers and delivers end-to-end IoT solutionsplatform. Our partnership with Borqs will fuel greater cooperation among our portfolio companies around the globe,“ said Shekhar Kirani, partner, Accel Partners.
Founded in 2007, Borqs is expected to list on Nasdaq in April, after it entered into a reverse merger agreement with Pacific Special Acquisition in December last year.
A special acquisition vehicle or a blank cheque firm is a listed entity set up for the purpose of acquiring companies, providing the latter with a backdoor listing on the bourses.
According to documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, post the closing of the reverse merger, Borqs will become the operating entity of the combined company, with its shareholders expected to own about 78% of Pacific’s outstanding ordinary shares. Pacific will also change its name to Borqs Technologies, Inc.
While, both Qualcomm and Accel Partners, are new investors, Borqs has been in a business partnership with the former for about five years. The company has been the sole technology license holder of Qualcomm in India, undertaking Android-specific upgrades across the telecommunication giant’s platform, among others.
“We also work on carrier features for Qualcomm, across markets. Additionally, we also provide some our intellectual property to them, and are their commercial licensees as well,” Hareesh Ramanna, co-founder, Borqs, told ET.
Borqs has also partnered with Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Jio, which launched its commercial operations in September last year. The IoT product developer has worked with the latest entrant to the Indian telecom sector, to develop premium carrier aggregation devices for Reliance Jio.
“We are going to launch a couple of more devices under Reliance Jio’s “Lyf” brand later this year. We are also working with them to develop and launch other IoT devices,” said Ramanna said.
The company, which has projected revenue of $161.7 million for the current fiscal, with EBITDA of about 10%, is also in the process of identifying its first manufacturing facility in India.
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