Vivid's Competitor Acquired by German company

http://www.finsmes.com/2017/09/osram-acquires-iiot-solutions-provider-digital-lumens.html

GermanyUSA Published on September 5, 2017

Digital Lumens Inc., a Boston, Massachusetts-based company that specializes in industrial IoT solutions, was acquired by Munich, Germany-based lighting manufacturer Osram. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

Very interesting space for VIV holders to be in. Future looks bright (pun intended). Especially when you revisit this interview with Alan Kohler (who is a shareholder in VIV) earlier in the year - VIV have been successful every time they have come up against Digital Lumens.

Alan Kohler: Is anyone else doing what you do anywhere in the world?

Sam Marks (CEO VIV): In relation to the level of smarts. There is probably one group out of Boston that we look to as a similar sort of business called Digital Lumens. They’ve got some very good technology. They probably sell their business model quite differently to ours. But from technology and savings-wise, probably similar. It’s always hard to know what the competitors are doing. But they are probably the only ones that we would look at as a similar product, that we would compare ourselves to. The rest of the market is really selling what I would consider substitute goods. Which is lights. So yes we can be compared to a light fitting but it doesn’t have the data. It doesn’t have the smarts and won’t get the same savings.

Alan Kohler: So how’s Digital Lumens doing out of Boston?

Sam Marks (CEO VIV): Good. Hard to tell. They are private. They were funded probably 12 or 18 months ago by a round through Goldman Sachs. So the question is when do they go public. But at the moment they are private, so it’s hard to know exactly what they are doing.

Alan Kohler: Are you bumping into them when you look around? I mean are they, I presume they’re only in the US, are they?

Sam Marks (CEO VIV): They’re outside of the US now. We’ve come across them a few times here in Australia. So far we’ve been successful as far as we know on all the times we’ve come up against them but it’s hard to tell.