From 2018 to date, a total of 103 factories around the world have been certified as lighthouse factories, of which 37 are in China. The country has outgrown the image of messy sweatshops and is now heading for its next goal: Embrace digitalization and get an upgraded manufacturing industry. As the digital infrastructure gradually improves in factories, manufacturing enterprises have begun to think about how to excavate the hidden meaning from the data they have collected. We at NGP Capital have been following the rise of data intelligence in various application scenarios, especially within the manufacturing sector.

Today, we are delighted to announce our investment in Synergies' $12 million series A round. Synergies is a cognitive application service provider that combines business knowledge, artificial intelligence technology, and software development. Synergies’ product, JarviX All-In-One AnalyticOps Platform helps enterprise customers digitize and optimize their production or business process. Synergies is helping its enterprise customers to establish the “best practices” of production yield management, supply chain management, employee turnover forecast, and beyond.

We led the investment in Synergies for several reasons:

• Promising market opportunity

China’s smart manufacturing infrastructure is maturing. Under the pressure of the rising cost of labor and raw materials, manufacturing enterprises have urgent demand for productivity improvement and cost optimization. According to China’s "14th Five-year Plan" for Intelligent Manufacturing Development, 70% of manufacturing enterprises above the designated size will realize digitalization by 2025. As more factories start to digitalize their daily production, solutions such as Synergies’ JarviX platform will take centre stage.

• Solid product with good traction

Synergies’ product lowers the barriers to performing data analytics and brings immediate effect to customers. It’s been getting good tractions and won several blue-chip customers. The product also has the potential to be applied to more verticals and Synergies has established partnerships with infrastructure providers and consulting companies to carry out the scaling plan.

• Experienced and motivated team

The founder Michael Chang is equipped with both an A.I. technology background and industrial domain know-how. The core management team consists of young serial entrepreneurs and experienced advisors with decades of experience from top corporates in manufacturing. Throughout our meetings, we saw how committed the team is to executing their mission within industry 4.0, and we share their passion for perfecting their product.

Synergies has certainly had a fruitful year in 2021 yet they’ve just started. The race towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution has begun in China and NGP is excited to back Synergies and looks forward to a fulfilling journey together.

1. Read the exclusive on TechCrunch
2. See the official press release

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