Silicon Prairie has seen another significant investment on March 31, 2021. Saskatoon’s Rivercity Innovations (RCI) has announced the closing of a $700,000 seed round.
Led by Conexus Venture Capital Inc., the round also saw participation from Saskatchewan’s Golden Opportunities Fund and Tribune Capital.
RCI was founded in 2017 with the company’s Internet of Things (IoT) product BeeSecure. The product was a Government of Saskatchewan Innovation Challenge winner, designed for crime reduction. RCI builds sensors for IoT solutions and have developed their expertise in LoRa. Their LoRa product is the world’s smallest GPS tracker usable for everything from bikes to corporate asset tracking.
RCI has seen significant growth in the last two years. The seed round investment will grow the RCI team and market expansion throughout Canada and to the U.S. and Europe.
“We’ve come a long way since we started, and we have so much more planned to expand RCI not just locally, but globally,” says Jeff Shirley, CEO, and co-founder, RCI. “Our first order of business will be scaling RCI using the investment from Conexus, leveraging the SaskTel LoRa network right here in Saskatchewan to help with our sales growth.”
Conexus Venture Capital Inc. is keen to see the work RCI has done with LoRa and IoT grow.
“RCI has taken the opportunity presented by IoT and has already created the world’s smallest LoRa GPS tracker, a LoRa product for people/property managers to monitor their vacant properties to reduce their insurance premiums, and new solutions specific to farmers. Anytime founders come to you with the problem of having too many of their initial test products finding customer demand, you need to find a way to work with them,” says Sean O’Connor, Managing Director, Conexus Venture Capital Inc. “In just two years, RCI has hit some major milestones and seen significant growth. They are just getting started, and there is much more to come from Jeff, Lance, and the RCI team.”
Shirley also credits the tech ecosystem and Innovation Saskatchewan for their part in RCI’s success to date. “We’re very fortunate to have chosen to start our business here in Saskatchewan, at Innovation Place. The tech ecosystem in our province, with support from our provincial government especially from past Minister of Innovation Saskatchewan, Tina Beaudry-Mellor, was instrumental in our success to date,” says Shirley. “The milestones we’ve been able to accomplish are largely due to the behind-the-scenes guidance and support from our mentors and programs available to Saskatchewan companies. We’ve learned so much over the last few years and are now focused on scaling up and commercializing the technologies we have with our key partners.”
