Aussie adventure tech start-up Milo snags $12m in funding
Summary
An Australian-founded adventure-technology start-up backed by the iPhone manufacturing giant Foxconn has just closed its Series A funding round for $12 million, taking its total funding to date to $18 million.The company, Loose Cannon Systems, makes the hands-free communicator Milo, which adventure-sports enthusiasts can clip to their clothes or equipment, allowing groups of up to six users to speak to each other while theyre skiing, mountain biking or doing any other sport that typically takes both hands.Australian founder Peter Celinksi, who spoke to The Australian Financial Review at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, said early backers of the wireless communicator on the fundraising site Kickstarter had also expressed interest in using Milo in industries such as retail and building, where hands-free communication was often required, too.The $12 million funding round, which was led by the US venture capital firm De Novo Ventures and backed by the newly established Australian venture fund XT Ventures, would be used to develop new features for the Milo, which can be upgraded over-the-air once its paired with a mobile phone.The devices themselves use unlicensed radio spectrum to talk to each other, much like walkie-talkies do, except the Milos can be grouped together in a mesh network, which allows the radio signal to hop from one device to the next, effectively extending the 600-metre range of each Milo indefinitely, as long as there are other Milos in the group to bounce the signal to the next device.