{"id":1985,"date":"2020-06-15T17:11:23","date_gmt":"2020-06-15T17:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/?p=1985"},"modified":"2020-06-15T17:11:23","modified_gmt":"2020-06-15T17:11:23","slug":"wi-harper-backed-drop-raises-13-3mto-make-connected-kitchens-smarter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wi-harper-backed-drop-raises-13-3mto-make-connected-kitchens-smarter\/","title":{"rendered":"WI Harper-backed Drop raises $13.3M to make connected kitchens smarter"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]WI Harper Group | June 9, 2020\u00a0\u00a0 Source: VentureBeat<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1592248462591{background-color: #e4e4e4 !important;}”]WI Harper-backed Drop, the San Francisco and Dublin based smart kitchen platform startup, announced that it had raised $13.3 million in Series A1 funding. The round wasco-led by Alpha Edison and Morpheus Ventures, with participation by WI Harper Group, Alsop Louie Partners, and other investors. Steve Horowitz, partner at Alpha Edison, and Ray Musci, managing director at Morpheus Ventures, will join Drop’s board of directors.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2tj-wJ2cQyQ&feature=youtu.be” el_width=”80″ align=”center”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Drop<\/a>, a smart kitchen platform that wants to unify what it calls the \u201cfragmented cooking experience,\u201d has secured $13.3 million in a series A round of funding. This comes as consumers continue to invest in contraptions that connect their home to the internet, from\u00a0video doorbells<\/a>\u00a0to refrigerators\u00a0infused with computer vision<\/a>. The smart kitchen market specifically was pegged at\u00a0$14.5 billion in 2019<\/a>, a figure that could\u00a0more than double<\/a>\u00a0within five years.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column][vc_empty_space][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

| Home cooking<\/b><\/span><\/h5>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Drop offers a platform for connecting appliance manufacturers, recipe publishers, and grocers to home cooks. Founded out of Ireland in 2012, the Dublin-based company originally focused on hardware,\u00a0<\/span>developing a connected kitchen scale<\/a> that was sold globally through Apple Stores. But Drop pivoted to software in 2015, with the goal of \u201cconnecting all stages of the cooking journey.\u201d Today, that includes a\u00a0<\/span>mobile app with recipes<\/a>, and Drop partners with multiple appliance makers \u2014 including Bosch, Kenwood, GE Appliances, and Electrolux \u2014 to tightly integrate those recipes with kitchen equipment.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]\u201cWe are building the one app that orchestrates all smart kitchen appliances and delivering the full stack IoT (internet of things) platform under the hood for the appliances to work seamlessly in that world,\u201d Drop CEO Ben Harris told VentureBeat.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]This means that beyond Drop\u2019s clients across mobile, web, and voice, it works closely with the technologies required to make smartphones talk to home appliances, including IoT firmware, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Drop also gives companies insights into how consumers are using their appliances and recipes.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Users add appliances to their Drop profile, and the app \u201crewrites\u201d the recipe to suit \u2014 entirely localized by region. The Drop \u201ctranslation engine\u201d converts a recipe from cups to fluid ounces or grams to milliliters, for example. Drop also sends the temperatures, cooking times, and settings directly to a connected appliance to ensure the food is cooked properly.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image source=”external_link” external_img_size=”800×100″ alignment=”center” custom_src=”https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/Picture1.png” caption=”Above: Drop: Smart kitchen platform”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The humble kitchen is now home to all manner of connected devices, including smart faucets that let users start and stop water flow with their voice and exhaust vents with embedded touchscreens. But it\u2019s ultimately about making food \u2014 and we\u2019ve seen a number of contenders in this burgeoning field. Samsung last year acquired a smart food platform called Whisk, which uses deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) to build an extensive \u201cfood genome\u201d that charts the relationships between ingredients and their individual properties. Whisk plays a big role in Samsung\u2019s connected kitchen, underpinning the meal-planning smarts in Samsung fridges.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Drop and Whisk have different methods but a similar goal \u2014 making recipes and shopping lists work more cohesively with the modern kitchen. One of Drop\u2019s selling points is that it\u2019s entirely appliance-agnostic \u2014 reflecting the fact that many (or most) kitchens house multiple brands.[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Drop and Whisk have different methods but a similar goal \u2014 making recipes and shopping lists work more cohesively with the modern kitchen. One of Drop\u2019s selling points is that it\u2019s entirely appliance-agnostic \u2014 reflecting the fact that many (or most) kitchens house multiple brands.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column][vc_empty_space height=”100px”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

| About WI Harper Group<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Founded in 1993,\u00a0WI Harper is a pioneer and leading cross-border venture capital firm investing in early and expansion stage companies across Greater China, Asia Pacific and the US. With offices in Beijing, Taipei, and San Francisco, the firm actively oversees more than $1 billion in assets under management. Since inception nearly three decades ago, WI Harper has invested in over 400 startups and has successfully experienced more than 100 IPO and M&A exits.<\/p>\n

We look for innovative companies and visionary founders in healthcare and technology fields where there are high synergies and meaningful value added cross selling opportunities. While our healthcare team is presently focused on bioinformatics as well as digital biology, our technology team has a more generalist approach covering big data, analytics, artificial intelligence, AR\/VR, IoT, robotics, drones, autonomous driving, as well as digital media and green energy projects.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]WI Harper Group | Ju […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}